


Missing a Motive

by Mums_the_Word



Category: No Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Gen, Murder, Possible Motive, Possible Suspects
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-19 06:28:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 36,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9422471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mums_the_Word/pseuds/Mums_the_Word
Summary: Jennifer Austin is living a mother’s worst nightmare. Someone has murdered her young daughter and the police are struggling to find a motive for the heinous act and the person responsible. This is a twisty psychological thriller until the very end.





	1. Part One: The Crime

      She pulled slowly into the small driveway, pushing the button on the garage door opener as she went. She got out of the car in the dim light of a 60-watt bulb, clutching the two packs of Virginia Slims Light Menthol in her hand. She had given up smoking a long time ago, but after Tom’s death, she had turned to the addicting nicotine once again to help calm her nerves and to get through the long days. She opened the connecting door into the mudroom and then walked slowly into the adjacent kitchen. She had left a small lamp burning in the living room located through the archway. The house was quiet, just as she had left it a short time ago before she had made the brief run to the convenience store.

     She first peeked into Noah’s little nursery and saw her eight-month-old son lying on his back in his crib. His little hands were clenched into tight fists and lay on either side of his head. She watched in fascination as his small puckered lips moved in a sucking motion. She wondered if babies dreamed, and tried to imagine the substance of them.

     Next, she cracked open the door of her daughter’s bedroom, an oasis of blue depicted in the wallcovering, the area rug, and the curtains at the windows. The small twin bed remained pushed firmly against one wall, and the protective bed rail was still in place on the open side. Everything looked peaceful and serene. There was only one problem—Cassidy was not nestled among the soft blankets. Her abandoned doll laying next to the pillow was the only testament that the occupant had ever been there.

~~~~~~~~~~

     The call came into the borough’s 911 number at exactly 11:20 PM that night. This small, unpretentious Pennsylvania hamlet, just eight miles from the Maryland state line, did not have twenty-four-hour staffing, so the call was automatically re-routed to the State Police in York. Two uniformed officers arrived at the small house at exactly 11:48 PM. The young mother seemed in a state of shock, no doubt almost immobilized by fear and worry. She had only been gone for a few minutes, she told them, and the garage door was secure when she left. She didn’t know how this could have happened. They asked about the children, and she told them that her infant son and her two-year-old daughter had been soundly asleep when she slipped out to make her hasty purchase.

     The house and grounds were thoroughly searched. There were no discernible signs of a forced entry, so more calls were made for reinforcements. A team of additional officers rousted neighbors from their beds in the early hours after midnight to ask if anyone might have seen the child. This was just a small enclave of ten houses on a knoll, so that endeavor went quickly. Now every home was brightly lit, and very concerned people meandered to the center of the chaos. They were politely turned away by the investigating officers. Eventually, more law officers arrived to comb the surrounding woods and cornfields with flashlights while incessantly calling little Cassidy’s name. Ultimately, an Amber Alert was issued for a two-year-old female dressed in a pink nightgown with a smiling princess on the front.

     By morning, everyone’s nerves were raw when two bloodhounds arrived on site with their handlers. The thick-bodied trackers captured the scent quite easily. How could they not? The child had lived in this home her whole life, and fragments of her existence were everywhere. The canine coaches began taking the keen-scented animals in ever widening circles away from the house. By late afternoon, the small, battered body of the child was found deep among rows of cornstalks drying in the autumn sun barely a mile from her house. The fall months had commenced with almost thirty days without any rainfall, so the earth beside the field was caked and sun-parched, yielding no tire treads that could be encased in a plaster mold.

     Much later, the coroner would write his findings up in triplicate. The cause of death was the result of blunt force trauma, possibly from a fist. The child had been severely beaten in the face and upper torso, with the fatal blow causing her small, fragile neck to snap under the onslaught. Unbelievably, there had been little overt bleeding, with the dark contusions appearing under the skin much later as she lay on a slab in the morgue. There was no sign of sexual assault, and a forensics team had found no foreign material on her small frame, nor on the nightgown that she still wore.

     The brutal murder investigation ratcheted up. The young man at the small convenience store remembered the pale young woman with her dark hair carelessly gathered in a ponytail at the nape of her neck. Yeah, she had come in the night before around 11 o’clock when he had first begun his 11-7 overnight shift. Sure, he recognized her. She often stopped in, but her purchases were usually a pack of cigarettes or the occasional pint of Haagen-Dazs ice cream. Although the now-distraught mother did not have the receipt for her most recent purchase, the cash register log showed that two packs of the same brand of cigarettes had been bought at exactly 11:06 PM the previous night. No, the clerk had not seen any children, but then he had not really been looking for any. The police confiscated the register tape. Unfortunately, there had been only a few customers that late at night, and apparently, everyone had paid with cash. Thus, the police could not find out who those other persons might have been.

     Meanwhile, an investigating team checked each window and door of the small house on Emberton Court. The remnants of fingerprint dust now marred every surface. Even though there were no signs of forced entry, any extraneous fingerprints were being run through a nationwide database. The police tactfully asked each neighbor in the court to be fingerprinted. Most readily obliged, but some appeared appalled and insulted, flatly refusing to be included in this dragnet of possible suspects. Their names were jotted down and included in a case file that was expanding by the minute.

     The child’s mother was now almost in a fugue state, sitting at the kitchen table staring off into nothingness. An older matron in the neighborhood had been allowed entrance to the house to take care of little Noah until Jennifer Austin’s mother-in-law had arrived from nearby Baltimore. That equally distraught older woman now clutched her infant grandson to her chest as if her embrace could protect him from the malevolent harm that had visited this sad, little home.


	2. Chapter 2

     The story of poor Jennifer Austin’s life read like a tragic paperback novel that could have easily been written by Euripides or Sophocles. She had been born twenty-six years ago in Baltimore to a staunchly blue-collar family just one step above what others might deem “red-neck.” She was the only child of critical parents who expected perfection. Although an obedient, quiet child, she could never quite live up to their exacting standards. If she got a B+ on a report card, they demanded to know why it wasn’t an A. If she did get an A, then they expected an A+. When she was ready to graduate with honors from high school, they informed their daughter that they were not going to cough up good, hard-earned money so that she could “find herself” by wasting time at a liberal arts college. She needed to focus on a career. So, that is exactly what she did.

     Jennifer enrolled in a nearby community college and pursued a degree in nursing. After she passed the state board exams, she added an RN behind her name and found employment in a downtown Baltimore hospital. Her career path started with long shifts in the Neonatal Intensive Care Nursery, and that is where she met her future husband.

     Jennifer’s parents had high hopes that their daughter would snag a doctor to justify their outlay of money, but those dreams were dashed when she brought home Tom Austin, a respiratory therapist. Premature babies frequently need aid from a ventilator in those first few days and weeks of a precarious start in life. Tom routinely cruised through the nursery unit checking gauges and connections on the complicated machines. He was also on call when a tiny newborn took a turn for the worse and needed to be intubated. He was gentle and soft-spoken, and Jennifer found herself attracted to him because of his kindness. He treated her with respect, was never critical, and it wasn’t long before they began dating in earnest.

     Sometimes, if she were being honest, the young woman wondered if she hadn’t made this life choice out of a rebellion that had never asserted itself at home. She knew that her parents would be outraged, and they certainly were, when she brought her fiancé home for the first time and informed her mother and father that she intended to become his wife.

     “If you insist on marrying this _nigger_ and having nappy-haired little darkies, then you are forever dead to us,” they harshly told her.

     She had moved out the very next day and into Tom’s little studio apartment in the city. The next month, the young couple was married by a justice of the peace with only Tom’s parents and sisters in attendance. Jennifer’s parents kept their word and ignored their only child and her less than suitable mate. It hurt, but Jennifer and Tom vowed to rise above the prejudice and to live their lives without regrets or apologies.

     After a year, the tiny apartment began feeling claustrophobic, and they started looking for a starter home somewhere in the suburbs. Even with their combined salaries, everything that they liked was way beyond their reach. Therefore, they began looking farther afield. Someone suggested nearby Pennsylvania, which was only a forty-minute drive from Downtown Baltimore if one used Interstate 83 that was pretty much a straight shot. It seemed that you could get more bang for your buck in the neighboring state, even though you paid the price in yearly school and property taxes.

     So, on their days off from work, the couple took drives over the state line and became enchanted with the small-town feeling of the little boroughs exhibiting seasonal banners hanging from light poles, and had green spaces tucked into parks with baseball diamonds. Clusters of houses always seemed to back up to a set of train tracks, a field of corn or sunflowers, or a copse of deciduous trees. Almost by accident, they had turned into a street, only to find that it was a cul-de-sac with no exit. There were just ten houses grouped in a circle on small lots, and one actually had a "for sale" sign in the front yard. On a whim, the young pilgrims called the number of the realtor listed on that sign and met with her later that day.

     The agent was friendly and low key, as well as being forthcoming and honest. She informed Jennifer and Tom that the little Craftsman-style home was almost twenty-years-old, and was on the market because the aging owners were downsizing to a retirement community since they were no longer capable of managing the upkeep. Well, that was an understatement.

     Later in the week when the interested couple took a tour, they realized that not one thing had been updated or modernized in that twenty-year period. There was still faded, floral wallpaper on every vertical surface and matted shag carpet on the floors. The kitchen sink leaked, and there was a long teardrop-shaped rust stain in the yellow bathroom tub. The furnace and air conditioning units were original, and it was iffy to assume that they would keep on functioning properly in the years to come. The shingles on the roof were another concern as well. The foundation shrubbery was wild and unpruned, and some of the nearby trees had branches overhanging the eaves and downspouts. But, the asking price was well within their budget, and Tom and Jennifer meticulously ticked off the pros and cons in their bed at night.

     Tom agreed that the small cottage was a fixer-upper, but he maintained that they could do a lot of the work themselves like stripping off wall coverings, tearing up wall-to-wall carpeting, and sanding floors. For the other more intricate stuff—well, he could learn the rudimentary plumbing and electrical skills to replace rusted pipes and lighting fixtures. When Jennifer asked if he really knew his way around a hammer and saw, he just smiled and said that “Home Depot” sold a do-it-yourself manual that was an encyclopedia of novice information. He wore her down, and they eventually indentured themselves to a local bank so that they became landed gentry.

     That first year, their small savings were eaten up by the cost of a new roof, a new hot water heater, and the expense of an exterminator to eradicate nests of carpenter ants munching away on wooden studs behind the plasterboard. Unfortunately, a crack was also discovered in a basement wall that allowed water to seep into the cement floor after heavy rains. The double windows in the living room leaked as well when a passing thunderstorm sent sheets of water cascading down the panes of glass. The financially-strapped young homeowners had nothing left for the costly repair to the foundation, or even new windows, so Jennifer dutifully laid down old towels on the concrete floor in the basement to catch the moisture that left black mold growing on the adjacent walls. She also put little plastic cups on the windowsills in the living room to catch drips, and smaller towels for the overflow.

     Unfortunately, they would have to make do as best as they could because soon there would be only one income. Even though husband and wife usually sank into their marital bed at night exhausted from their twelve-hour shifts at the hospital or their weekend warrior labors, Jennifer had somehow become pregnant with her first child.

     Tom was overjoyed at the news, while Jennifer vacillated between excitement and panic. What had she done? How had she allowed this to happen? How could she hope to be a good mother with only her own harshly moralistic one as a role model? The insecurity tore at her, but Tom just attributed all this angst to the hormonal changes that were taking place in her body.

     "Everything will work out fine," he reassured her. "You’re a great person, so you’ll be a great mother." He decreed that all other projects be put on hold while they concentrated on fixing up a nursery, which according to Jennifer, had to be blue.

     Jennifer had instinctively known from her earliest days that she was a disappointment to her own father because she had not been a boy to carry on the family name. In order to get his attention and earn his love, the young female child became a tomboy, hating dresses and preferring jeans torn at the knees. She never collected Barbie dolls or tried to bake cupcakes for a doll’s tea party. Instead, she learned to love football and baseball, and was her father’s companion at Oriole home games and the occasional nosebleed bleacher seat for a Ravens face-off against another team in downtown Baltimore. She was a quick study and knew the intricate rules of the games and the roster of players. She could spout off statistics and averages as quickly as any boy in her school. She never dated, and her closest BFFs were other males in the neighborhood. She had just never developed the social skills to relate to the giggling, shallow group of teenagers who traveled in packs and wore eyeshadow and mascara. She considered them superficial, and they bored her because she had nothing whatsoever in common with them.

     Now that she was having her own child, it was understandable that Jennifer desperately wanted a boy. Just as in her teenage years, she feared that she could never relate to a frilly little girl, not even maternally. Tom appeased her desires by painting the nursery a pale, soft blue, and Jennifer put royal blue curtains on the windows and a navy checkered cushion on the white rocking chair. Even the fur of the soft little teddy bear on the bleached white dresser was a shade of turquoise. She was firmly convinced that if she willed something hard enough, it would happen. The Doppler study proved her wrong.

     The first sonogram showed that she and Tom were going to become parents of a little daughter. Jennifer tried to mask her disappointment because Tom was over the moon after they received the news.

     “I’m just being realistic, Honey,” the happy father-to-be told his wife. “Growing up, I was more of a nerd than a jock who got his jollies from sports. If we had a boy, I’d only embarrass him and myself if I tried to coach basketball or little league. That was never my thing and I’d suck at it. I’m just as content looking forward to ballet recitals, to tell you the truth.”

     So, after months of morning sickness and swollen ankles, Cassidy came into this world adored by her father and almost feared by her mother, who just knew that she would be the one to fail at this. As if sensing her mother’s insecurity, the child took advantage and was a demanding infant, suffering from colic and continually throwing up her mother’s breast milk. Finally, Jennifer surrendered to the inevitable and started giving her daughter formula from a bottle at age three months. Tom was overjoyed because now he could hold his little urchin in his arms and feed her. Cassidy never cried when she was with her father.

     Jennifer kept waiting for the onset of her menses after that, but it never came. Instead, a home pregnancy kit confirmed that she was pregnant once again. The children would be just fourteen months apart. Jennifer was too embarrassed to go to her obstetrician until the second trimester. Of course, the older man scolded her. She was a nurse, he fussed, and should have known that it took time for a woman’s organs to recover from childbirth. A back-to-back pregnancy would be taxing her body to the limit. Nonetheless, they never discussed termination, and she left his office with a prescription for folic acid and prenatal vitamins.

     Noah’s birth was a precipitous one, and Jennifer almost didn’t make it to the hospital in time. With just a few hours of laboring at home, she was fully dilated and crowning by the time that she hit the labor suite. The tiny baby boy slid into this world with little fanfare and nestled in his mother’s arms while serenely studying her face. Once home, his placid disposition continued. He was an easy baby who cried little and seemed content to coo and gurgle in delight no matter where Jennifer placed him.

     Mother and father discussed the future. They agreed that, eventually, Jennifer would return to her nursing career, but for now, she needed to be a full-time mother. Tom could always pick up extra shifts at various hospitals, and that was exactly what he was doing when Jennifer got a call one evening. A hospital in Baltimore County was phoning to ask where her husband was. He had not shown up for the 7PM-7AM shift in the emergency room. Jennifer called his cell phone repeatedly, but it continually went to voicemail.

     By 10 PM, she was frantic and turned on a local television station hoping for news of delays on the highway. During a commercial break in a sitcom, a news anchor did report a serious accident along Interstate 83. Details would follow at 11 PM, he promised solemnly. There was no way that Jennifer could wait that long, so she called the local police, who then informed her that interstates were the responsibility of the State Police. Her next call was to the Pennsylvania State Police. Yes, they had heard of an accident, but since it had occurred below the state line and was not in their jurisdiction, they had no details. They advised her to call the Maryland State Police.

     With trembling fingers, she made that final call and was shunted from one department to another. Eventually, one knowledgeable trooper informed her that a Thomas Austin had been in a vehicular accident on Interstate 83 near Hunt Valley in Baltimore County. He had subsequently been flown out by a Medevac helicopter to the University of Maryland’s Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore City. Jennifer kept taking deep breaths so that she wouldn’t panic. Directory assistance got her to the main switchboard of the hospital, and a sympathetic operator must have heard the desperation in the young woman’s voice and routed her call straight through to the trauma unit. A male nurse answered, and when she tried to ask how bad the injuries to her husband were, he waffled and didn’t answer her queries directly.

     “I’m a nurse,” she pleaded desperately. “Please, just tell me what his injuries are and if he survived them.”

     The young man was kind and his words were soft. “I think that you should have someone bring you down to the hospital right now, Ma’am. It’s very bad. My report said that your husband was broadsided by a drunk driver who crossed the median, and he has sustained life-threatening trauma to multiple systems of the body that the team is trying to stabilize.”

     The adrenalin had kicked in, and Jennifer found that she was suddenly cold all over and had no saliva in her mouth. She inanely croaked the first thought that came into her mind. 

     “I don’t even know where you are located. I don’t know the city well at all.”

     The patient, sympathetic nurse repeated step-by-step instructions that Jennifer wrote down on the back of a grocery list with a shaking hand. Then she made a call to her in-laws in Baltimore, waking the old couple from a sound sleep.

     The distraught and frightened young mother hastily bundled both children into the car with a willy-nilly assortment of diapers and bottles. Noah went right back to sleep in his car seat, but Cassidy cried the whole time, perhaps somehow sensing that her beloved father was in peril. Jennifer could not bring herself to drive the long stretch of Interstate 83, fearing that she might have to witness the crash site. Instead, she chose the twisty and more rural York Road route that eventually brought her to the Baltimore Beltway. She stopped briefly in Woodlawn where her father-in-law got behind the wheel, and her mother-in-law tried soothing the uprooted children.

     Tom’s father had stopped driving at night for a reason. The oncoming headlights tended to blind him, but it was now after midnight and the traffic was light. The worried pair made a few wrong turns, but eventually, they found the imposing University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center. They were escorted to a waiting room because Tom had been transferred to surgery. They sat for two long hours, sipping god-awful coffee from a nearby vending machine. He’s going to come through this they repeatedly reassured each other. However, that was far from the hoped-for outcome. The talented surgeons could not repair the damage quickly enough, and the hard-fought battle was lost. 

     The turnout at the funeral was huge because a young life cut short was a true tragedy. Jennifer found that she was incapable of responding to all the heartfelt condolences, so her in-laws did their best to show their appreciation to the multitude of mourners. It took its toll. Just three months later, her forlorn father-in-law keeled over his desk in his law office from a massive coronary. Everyone agreed that overwhelming grief from having lost his only son had certainly been the cause.

     After her own husband’s death, Jennifer took stock of her financial situation. Tom had a small life insurance policy that he had taken out at work. It wasn’t a lot, but it did pay double because he had lost his life in an accident. It would be fruitless to try to get recompense from the uninsured drunk driver who was unemployed. Thus, the only nest egg that Jennifer now had was the insurance money that came through a month later. She knew that if she lived quite frugally, it might last her for a few years. By then, the children would be older and she could return to her nursing career. Until that time, she had to tough out a lonely and depressing existence as a young widow. However, Fate was not done with Jennifer just yet. Now, she had the ultimate cross to bear—a mother’s worst nightmare.


	3. Chapter 3

Rick Schrader and Stan Kostas were the primary detectives assigned to the Austin case and were well aware that the first forty-eight hours were a crucial window in solving a crime. After that, people’s memories began to get foggy and unreliable, and perpetrators put distance between themselves and the scene of their wrongdoings. 

Stanley Kostas was the older of the two detectives who, between them, had over twenty-six years of experience on the force. He had been a policeman for seventeen years and had been promoted to detective ten years into his tenure. He was a happily married man with two kids in college and a very tolerant wife who abided his long hours on the job. He was the epitome of slow and steady wins the race, was patient and intuitive, and left no avenue of interest unexplored.

Richard Schrader, on the other hand, was more proactive and impatient, and was like a bird dog straining at the leash to get on with the hunt for answers. At age thirty-two, he had been married and divorced and was not anxious to again tie the knot. He had no children, and for once, was glad that he didn’t because he could not imagine what this child’s parent was feeling. Right now, as always, Rick’s job was his total focus, and he was very good at it. 

Actually, the unlikely-paired detectives complemented each other in their approach to solving crimes, and made the most progress when they talked things through together and brainstormed. At the moment, the two investigators were following protocol and had dutifully assigned plainclothes cops to attend the child’s funeral. One undercover officer was even masquerading as a member of the media covering the ceremony at the simple rural church, and much later when the small casket was interred at a nearby cemetery. He had managed to get shots of each person who had attended. Some twisted individuals got off on seeing the results of their handiwork and might have been there trying to blend into the crowd. 

Maybe they would get lucky after they put a name to each face and could actually eliminate who should not have been there. That task was herculean because people were often just curious, or came simply because they had heard of the tragedy but really had no connection to the family. It was extremely frustrating, but a team of other cops began to sift through the mess of photos anyway.

“Show them to the family,” Stan had suggested. “That may weed out a lot.”

One of the secondary detectives had a question. “The farmer who owns that field where the kid was found wants to know what he should do with all the candles, pictures, and stuffed animals that people left after the crime scene tape came down?”

Stan looked at his partner, and both men shrugged helplessly in unison. It might have been a comical gesture if it wasn’t so deeply tragic. 

~~~~~~~~~~

Stan and Rick returned once more to Emberton Court to have a second go-around with the neighbors. One family had been away with their small children at Disney World for the past week, so they were immediately eliminated as suspects. That left eight other families who were none too happy to have their lives again disrupted by intrusive cops. For the next three hours, the mixture of older people and couples with young children were quizzed on their whereabouts, what they may have seen, or something that they might have forgotten to mention the first time that they were interviewed. 

By late afternoon, the two detectives had acquired no new information about the night in question, but, by subtle prodding, they were able to get a picture of the Austin family and their dynamic. Most agreed that the young couple kept to themselves and were not into socializing. Only on occasion would they see Jennifer pushing a baby stroller around the court. Most admitted that they had never talked to Tom Austin before his tragic automobile accident.

“Did you get any kind of vibe from any of those people?” Stan asked his partner.

“Nah, not really,” Rick admitted. “I think that most are still in shock that something like this could happen in their peaceful and safe little corner of the world. Their reactions seemed normal, and nobody seemed off. What was your take?”

“Yeah, I agree. I don’t think our doer is here,” Stan answered thoughtfully. “But I find it a bit strange that their perception of the Austins was so limited. The couple moved here four years ago, but none of the neighbors claimed to have been close friends. Only one lady mentioned that Jennifer spent some time with her next door neighbor, but that woman and her family moved away two years ago.”

“Okay, let’s explore that,” Rick said and began ticking things off on his fingers. “The first two years that the Austins lived here, they both were working really long hours at downtown Baltimore hospitals, made even longer by the commute. According to the mother-in-law, they spent every free minute rehabbing their old house. Next, little Cassidy is born, so that must have taken up a lot of Jennifer’s time. And then, slam-bam, thank you, ma’am, another baby arrives, so now she really has her hands full. That probably didn’t allow any time for soaking in a hot tub on a neighbor’s deck with a glass of wine.”

Stan went out on a limb. “Do you think that they may have been shunned because they were a bi-racial couple? Remember, Partner, not everybody is on board with that, especially up here in the sticks. Old prejudices die hard in some areas.”

Rick’s forehead creased in thought. “That may be an avenue that we’ll want to pursue to get a feel for any bigotry. However, for now, I think that maybe we need more information. Let’s track down the neighbor who moved away.”

 


	4. Chapter 4

Carolyn Burton and her husband, Daniel, had not moved far. Actually, they were barely three miles away, just over the state line in Maryland. Their house was at the end of a rutted dirt road on a panhandle. A low-slung rancher came into view, as well as several outbuildings, among acres and acres of corn and soybeans. Both Carolyn and her husband were at home when the detectives knocked. Also at home were four small children who looked like stair steps in age. The little peanut gallery were all now gawking at the strangers with big, curious eyes.

“I first met Jennifer a short while after she and Tom initially moved in,” Carolyn explained. “I took over a cake, we chatted for a bit, and she told me that she was a nurse. Then one day, Zoe, my little hellion on wheels, took a header down the front steps and this big egg immediately swelled up on her forehead. I panicked and banged on Jennifer’s door and, luckily, she was home. I wanted a medical opinion about whether I should take my kid to the ER. This was all before Jen had any of her own kids yet, so she offered to go with me and my brood to York Hospital so that Zoe could be checked out. Thank God my little klutz has a hard head because everything turned out okay.”

“So, you knew her pretty well then?” Stan queried.

“Um, I wouldn’t say ‘well.’ It wasn’t like we were always in each other’s kitchens watching soap operas and having coffee. We would wave when we passed, and maybe discuss the kids for a few minutes at the mailbox. By then, Jen had Cassidy. Dan and I moved away before she had the little boy.”

“Exactly why did you move away?” Rick asked curiously.

“That was on me,” Dan, the husband, offered with an embarrassed grin as he spoke for the first time. “I’m an investment counselor by day, but I’ve always had dreams of being something of a gentleman farmer. We now actually own thirty-five acres of land. The taxes are not too bad because it’s zoned as an agricultural property, so we have to raise produce to justify that to the IRS. I know that it sounds weird, but I keep myself sane by plowing the south forty.” 

“Did the Austin family ever come to visit after you moved away?” Rick persisted.

“No, not really. I suppose that all of us just got caught up getting through the day, you know,” Carolyn answered. “Dan and I are really busy from sunup to sundown, and Jen suddenly found herself with two babies and then no husband. Her life has been such a tragedy. I should have been a better friend to her,” she admitted sadly.

After a few minutes of silence, the young mother asked timidly, “Do you think that it would be okay if I visited her now, or is it hypocritical to just suddenly pop up and act concerned? I guess that I could always use the excuse that I want to return her house key, even though I’m sure that she’ll change the locks now. Dan and I sure did, and added deadbolts as well.”

The two detectives shared a look. Jennifer Austin had never mentioned that anyone besides her mother-in-law had a key. Neither the woman nor her husband caught the look. Dan Burton was absently nodding his head. 

“I never worried about crime up here before this tragedy. You hear about something like that happening in Baltimore City, but it seems inconceivable that it happened in our little world.”

“When did you exchange house keys?” Stan asked Carolyn off-handedly.

The young mother’s forehead creased in concentration. “I think it was before Cassidy was born because Jen was still working at the hospital. The Austins were having trouble with rain coming in their front windows when it poured really hard. Since she and Tom worked extremely long hours, Jen gave me a key to check during a thunderstorm to make sure that they wouldn’t be coming home to a flood. Now that I think about it, I never actually gave her my house key because I’m always home. Dragging four kids with me anywhere is definitely not for the faint of heart.”

“We can return that key for you. Would you mind getting it for us?” Rick asked politely.

While Carolyn went to rummage through a kitchen drawer, the detective confronted her husband with a ruse that was actually an out-and-out lie.

“We’ve managed to collect some DNA from the crime scene,” he began earnestly. “We have asked everybody in the vicinity that knew the Austins to provide a DNA sample as well as fingerprints so that we can rule out all the innocent people. Would you and your wife have a problem providing that?”

The young man across from them responded immediately.

“Sure, anything that you need, Detective. Carolyn and I would be glad to help so that you can get the horrible dude who did this.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Once they were back in their car, the detectives conferred.

“Well, what’s your take on them?” Stan asked.

“I don’t get a sense that the modern version of Mr. & Mrs. ‘American Gothic’ had anything to do with killing Cassidy,” Rick answered. “I do find it interesting, however, that everyone just assumes that a man committed the murder.”


	5. Chapter 5

The two detectives were now seated across from Jennifer Austin once more. She had just given little Noah his bottle and was rocking him gently.

“Initially, Mrs. Austin, you told us that only your mother-in-law had a key to your house. Why didn’t you tell us that a former neighbor, Carolyn Burton, had one as well?”

Jennifer looked startled for a second before she responded.

“I guess that I forgot about that because I was upset,” she said defensively.

“Of course you were,” Rick agreed. “But now perhaps you can think a bit more clearly. Does anyone else have a key to your home?”

“No, Detective, no one else,” she answered definitively.

“Do you keep your house key on a ring—maybe along with your car keys?” Rick continued to probe.

“Yes, I do, and I always keep that in my purse,” the young woman responded.

“Okay,” Stan took up the slack. “Was your purse ever out of your sight at any time—or maybe just your keys? When you get your car serviced, do you just give the garage the car key, or do you hand over the whole ring?”

Jennifer frowned in concentration.

“I guess I do hand over the whole ring when I get my oil changed or have the state-mandated yearly inspection. But I’m always sitting in the little waiting room while they do those things because it never takes more than a half-hour.”

“And where, exactly, is this garage?” Stan probed.

“It’s called ‘Quick Start,’ and it’s just fifteen minutes away in the next borough,” she answered with worry in her voice.

“We’ll check it out,” the detective promised. “Now, think again, Mrs. Austin. Is it correct to say that there are just three keys that will open the door to your house?”

Suddenly, the woman looked sheepish.

“Well, actually there is one more—a spare one that I hid outside in case I ever got locked out. Once Cassidy fiddled with the button on the door between the garage and the mudroom. I had taken her for a stroller ride in the neighborhood, but when we got back, we couldn’t get in. Carolyn Burton was in the hospital having a baby at the time, so we had to wait for hours until Tom got home. The spare one is in a little white box high up on a shelf in the garden shed.”

“Show us,” Stan persisted.

The spare key was where Jennifer said it was. Rick now had a few more questions for the woman.

“Your garage door has a manual keypad outside. I am assuming that if you had forgotten your garage door opener, you could enter a code and open the door that way. So, naturally, you would assume that everything was secure. Do you normally also lock the door between the garage and the mudroom when you leave the house?”

Jennifer looked at them for a bit before the light dawned.

“No, I don’t usually lock that door because I guess after Cassidy locked us out, I’m a little paranoid. But, you’re right. The garage does have a code, but I haven’t shared that with anyone—I swear!”

“What is the code, Mrs. Austin?” Stan asked gently so that he wouldn’t spook her.

“My birthday,” she answered softly.

To their professional credit, neither detective rolled their eyes in frustration.


	6. Chapter 6

     The two investigators next paid a visit to “Quick Start,” and spoke with the manager who happened to be a woman. She told them that the garage employed ten mechanics of different skill levels, and readily provided the names of all of them. She had no personal recollection of Jennifer Austin. The computer log of their files showed a sporadic automotive history for the Austin vehicle. Apparently, the woman drove very little because it was at least seven or eight months between the factory recommended oil changes of every three thousand miles. Nonetheless, the two men dutifully wrote down the names of the employees and ran them through the system back at the precinct. One name popped.

     Malcolm Jensen had appeared on NSOPR. First established in 2005, the National Sex Offender Public Registry listed him as living five miles away from the Austin home. He was immediately brought in for questioning even though there had been no sign of sexual assault on Cassidy’s body.

     “This is getting really old,” the hostile man growled. “Every time some kid goes home to his parents with some fantastic story, I’m dragged in here like a common criminal. I’m not some pervert, and, if you had done your research, you’d know that!”

     “This is a murder investigation, Sir,” Rick Schrader informed the man. “I would think that you would want to help get yourself off the hook. You can protest your innocence all that you want, but maybe you are not as lily-white as you claim. The Feds actually convicted you of lewd and lascivious behavior involving minors three years ago. That’s a fact, so this persecution complex just doesn’t hold much water.”

     “I have never, ever hurt anyone, so trumping up some bogus claim of murder ain’t gonna cut it,” Jensen said bitterly.

     “Where were you two nights ago from 10 PM on,” Stan Kostas demanded.

     “Home in my bed,” the suspect said forcefully. “And before you ask—yes, I was alone, and nobody can corroborate that. Look, just tell me ‘who’ said ‘what’ so that I can defend myself against this latest bunch of lies. I wasn’t anywhere near any kid, I can assure you.”

     “Did you see little Cassidy Austin when her mother came into ‘Quick Start’ last February to get her oil changed?” Stan wanted to know.

     “Did you get all excited seeing that pretty little girl, Jensen? Did you keep thinking about her until finally, you had to see her again? Is that what happened? You were privy to all the information in the computer like where she lived. And for a while, you had the key to her house in your hand, so it would not be hard to make an impression in something soft like wax. C’mon—tell us how you did it. Maybe you didn’t mean to hurt the child. Maybe you just took her so that the two of you could spend a little quality time together, but she started crying and you couldn’t have that. So, you panicked. Maybe you had to hit her to make her stop making a racket.”

     The suspect looked stunned for a second.

     “Whoa—just wait one minute! I know exactly who you’re talking about because it’s been all over the news for days. But, I never saw that kid, or if I did, I sure don’t remember her or her mother, or working on her car. I don’t even know _if_ I worked on her car.”

     Stan snorted. “So, you’re claiming a bad memory? I’ll bet that you have better recall for all the little girls and boys that you stalk!”

     Jensen was livid, but he took a long, calming breath and spoke in a soft, controlled tone of voice when he answered.

     “Do you know—I mean _really know_ —how I came to be branded a sex offender? I used to drive a box truck for a big bakery down in Baltimore City. I would start my route at 4 AM, making deliveries to the 24 hr. marts and convenience stores, and then the grocery store chains later in the day. Well, it takes plenty of strong coffee to do that day after day, and after a few hours, you sometimes get the urgent call of nature. There’s not a damn place open before sunup where you can stop to use a bathroom. So, one morning, I pulled into an alley and was taking a piss against the wall when, lucky me, three kids come strolling through and see me with my johnson hanging out. They run home giggling, tell an outraged mommy and daddy, and the next thing you know, I’m some pervert who traumatized those poor little kiddies.

     Now I got the label ‘sex offender’ branded on my forehead. I lost my job and had to move three times because people picketed my apartment building, and then wrote graffiti on my door in the next place. I finally moved up here to get some peace. I was lucky to get the job that I have now, and I just want to be left alone. But every time that you people want an easy fall guy for some crime regarding children, you come down on me.”

     The two detectives could not shake the man’s statement, and his explanation of the circumstances surrounding his conviction held up when they checked the records. They were forced to release him and now had their heads together once again.

     “I don’t see him being the doer,” Rick said with a shake of his head as he continued.

     “If he did make a copy of the key, why wait seven or eight months to make his move? There were no signs of sexual assault, just a brutal beating. Think about it. An adult male only had to hit a 22-pound little girl once to knock her senseless, not over and over. This whole thing reeks of out of control rage, as if someone started hitting her and just couldn’t stop. Maybe we should see who might have had a grudge against Jennifer Austin. Killing her daughter would be the ultimate payback.”

     Stan tended to disagree. “This seems like a crime of opportunity to me, rather than something that was planned, such as an abduction or kidnapping for ransom, or even just an attempt to wreak vengeance. Jennifer Austin decided, apparently on the spur of the moment, to go out for a pack of smokes. It wasn’t like she had a routine to leave her house every night at 11 PM. So, I doubt that someone would be lurking in the bushes night after night just waiting on the off chance that would happen.

     And, if the perp intended to harm the child, or even kill her, why take her out of the house to do that? You could accomplish that much easier right on the spot. Just put your hands around her throat and strangle her, then make your getaway without dragging her along. But, this perpetrator took the little girl with him. And another unanswered question—why take the girl and not the infant? It would have been easier to snatch the little boy who wouldn’t fight back. Why was Cassidy the target? Things should eventually make some kind sense, but right now, nothing does, and all we have are questions about a motive and no answers.”


	7. Chapter 7

     There might have been some credence to the vengeance theory that the two detectives had discussed. By week two, Jennifer Austin was getting a lot of mail, and while some of it was supportive, a lot was quite the opposite, being downright nasty and belligerent. Indignant parents were crucifying her for leaving her children unattended. Many claimed that she was an unfit mother and that her remaining little son should be taken away and placed in a safer home.

     Other correspondence was even viler and more disgusting. Self-righteous bigots were quick to assign blame squarely on Jennifer’s shoulders, but for a different reason.

     _“God has punished you for diluting the purity of the Aryan race,”_ one letter claimed in bold print. _“Your offspring are abominations!”_

     Another unsigned missive was just as cruel. _“See nigger-lover—that’s what happens when you flaunt that shit in people’s faces. You pay a really big price.”_

     Unfortunately, there were stacks and stacks of these anonymous letters. None were actually threatening. All just contained a superior smugness and a sense of racial prejudice that was sickening. The “Austin Case” team members were sifting through them, one at a time, after Jennifer dutifully turned them over. Each time that she surrendered a pile, she grew angrier and more withdrawn, not so much disturbed by the bigotry, but rather by the attacks on her parenting.

     “People are calling me a disgrace as a mother for leaving the children alone,” she told the detectives. “I’m not! I’m a good mother, and it was only a few minutes, for God’s sake. Other people are picking at me for smoking around the children. Well, I never, ever did that. I always stood outside on the back patio when I wanted a cigarette. In the winter, I’d smoke in the garage—never in the car or in the house so the kids never got any secondhand smoke in their lungs.”

     The detectives commiserated with her troubles.

     “People can be very cruel sometimes,” Stan said softly, “and, unfortunately, many love to hit below the belt when you are down and most vulnerable. They like to be self-righteous and condescending because these kinds of people have convinced themselves that they are always perfect. How nice that they can feel so self-assured. But I think ‘perfect’ people would have the courage to sign their names, unlike this sleazy bunch.”

     “Well, one person actually did sign her name,” Jennifer said softly as she held out a letter scrawled on loose-leaf paper. “This is from dear old Mom.”

     The letter began with just Jennifer’s name at the top, and the body of the message was strident, vitriolic and mocking in tone as it berated a daughter for her selfishness, her marriage, and her choice to bring bi-racial children into a world where they were sure to be shunned.

     _“You got what you deserved for your horrible choices in life,”_ the letter stated harshly. _“You were a self-centered teenager who thought only of yourself and your wants, with not a thought to your own parents who sacrificed their whole lives for you. You never thanked us for everything that we did for you. We put a roof over your head, clothes on your back, and paid for your education. Then, as pretty as you please, you turned your back on us and just went on your own merry way the first chance that you got. But we shouldn’t have really been surprised by that because everything was always about you, what you wanted or had to have. Well, little lady, you better believe that you are not special. Not by a long shot. What you are is an embarrassment to us and a sinner, and God made sure to punish you for your sins of self-indulgence and pride. You brought children into a world that doesn’t want mix breeds like them around. Neither the Whites nor the Blacks even want to claim them because they are not pure. You and your stupid husband were selfish, and your child is better off dead rather than being left with a mother like you.”_

     The letter was signed quite boldly with a flourish _—“your disgusted mother!”_

     “Is this the first time that you have had any contact with either of your parents?” Stan asked gently, not putting a timeframe on his inquiry.

     “Yep!” Jennifer answered, almost with a sneer in her voice. “The last time I ever exchanged any words with them was the day that I moved out of their home.”

     Stan ruminated on the young woman’s peculiar phrasing. Jennifer had said that she had moved out of “their” house, rather than I moved out of “my” childhood home. There was a definite disconnect between daughter and parents. Had her angry mother and father continued to harbor feelings of disgust that grew because there was no outlet or resolution for them? Would they have ultimately resorted to violence because the passage of time had intensified their feelings of betrayal and discontent? It was not out of the realm of possibility. Stan was never blindsided by people’s depravity and what they managed to do to one another. It was time to look into Jennifer Austin’s roots back in Baltimore.

     Giving the Baltimore police a heads up about their intentions, Stan and Rick drove south, down to a Baltimore County suburb. They had not called before coming, but rather wanted to catch the couple, Frank and Helen Pelham, unaware before they got their stories to jibe. The house was a small, almost dilapidated Cape Cod cottage on a tiny lot in a neighborhood that was declining. The front lawn had sparse areas of scrub grass, and the concrete steps up to the porch were cracked and crumbling. The detectives noticed that a thick plywood ramp had been haphazardly installed over those dangerous steps that led to a green front door with peeling paint. The doorbell didn’t seem to work, so they were forced to pound on the door. They knew that someone was home because they could hear a rather loud television beyond.

     After a few minutes, an older woman dressed in what Rick’s grandmother used to call a “housecoat” opened the door to them. She took in their suits and the badges that were shown to her and heaved a disgusted sigh.

     “I suppose that I have to talk to you,” she said hostilely.

     “It might be in your best interest to cooperate, Ma’am,” Stan said slowly. “Right now, we are investigating your granddaughter’s murder, and I would think that you and your husband would want to be helpful. We have some questions that need answers.”

     The unhappy woman opened the door a bit wider and, with a sweep of her hand, ushered them into a small living space. It was here that the television was doing its thing and making a racket during a rambunctious quiz show with people dressed in ridiculous costumes. A wizened old man with just a few stray tufts of gray hair was seated in a wheelchair engrossed in the theatrics. He gave the visitors no notice. His expression seemed blank, but if one looked closely, the left side of his face drooped with slack skin pulling his mouth down in a parody of a frowny-faced emoji.

     “My husband isn’t going to be of much use to you,” the woman decreed. “He had a stroke two years ago—can’t walk, can’t feed himself, can’t even tell me when he needs the toilet, for Christ’s sake. I don’t think he’s even there anymore, not really. It’s just his shell that I have to take care of day in and day out. Not a great life for either of us.”

     “Ma’am, Stan tried again, “perhaps you could turn down the volume on the tv so that we could talk for a few minutes.”

     Grudgingly, the woman turned it down a notch and then led her company into a small kitchen with a table for two. She sat down, as did Stan, while Rick leaned up against a stained Formica countertop. Stan then pulled out a copy of the woman’s letter to Jennifer.

     “Why did you feel the need to write this?” he asked.

     The woman scowled at him. “I just needed to get a few things off my chest. Jennifer deserves everything that has happened to her. She was never a good daughter. She may not have said stuff that was in her head, but you could tell that she was thinking evil thoughts about her father and me. We raised her up to be a good girl and the first chance that she got she goes running off to spread her legs for some Black buck, having kid after kid. It was a disgrace. She never thought about anybody but herself. She’s a damned nurse, for God’s sake—a profession that we paid for with our hard-earned money. She should have been here helping me take care of her father. But, not one word from her after his stroke!”

     “Was she even aware of your husband’s medical problems?” Rick asked from his position off to the side. “Did you call her to tell her?”

     “It was her duty as a daughter to keep in touch with us!” the woman almost shouted. “But no—not a single birthday or Christmas card after she left. She didn’t invite us to her wedding, so we stopped having a daughter after that. She ceased to exist for us. We no longer had a child.”

     Rick wondered if this angry woman even realized how skewed her perspective was. How could Jennifer help if she never knew the facts?

     “Where were you on the night that little Cassidy Austin went missing?” Rick was now all business.

     “Right here, you fool,” the vitriolic woman responded vehemently! “Where else would I be? I can’t leave my husband alone, and there’s nobody willing to stay with him except for the nurse’s aide that the state sends out once a week for two hours so that I can at least go to the grocery store. I am here twenty-four hours a day, day after endless day. Isn’t my life just peachy and my golden years a real blast?”

     Rick and Stan were relieved to climb back into their car and escape the confines of the small house with its thick miasma of animosity that made it hard to breathe. Both agreed that Jennifer Austin’s mother, although a resentful, unforgiving harridan, was not the perpetrator. Back to square one again.


	8. Chapter 8

Three weeks later, the two detectives were no closer to finding out who had beaten little Cassidy Austin to death and thrown her body into a cornfield. The media would not let it die, and the ineptitude of the police department was routinely played up on newscasts and printed editions of the newspaper.

“This is becoming a circus almost like the Jon Benet Ramsey case out in Colorado,” Rick complained. “They never solved that one either, and now voyeuristic people who have nothing better to do than stir up trouble have resurrected it again after over twenty years. Is that what’s going to happen here, Stan? Is this going to become a cold case that just will not go away? Are authors going to be writing sensational exploitive novels about how the cops screwed up well into the next decade?”

Stan was just as dismayed as his partner and ran his fingers through his thinning hair.

“Let’s do what we always do, Rick, when we hit a brick wall. Let’s start from the very beginning and paint a picture. At first, it may look like a Rorschach ink blot test, but maybe something that we have overlooked will suddenly smack us in the face,” Stan said as he began to tick things off on his fingers.

“First, we know that Jennifer Austin grew up in a harsh, controlling atmosphere with parents who were far from warm and cuddly. She managed to get an education but still was not able to get out from under their thumbs until she met her future husband. Maybe she loved him with all her heart, or maybe he was a convenient opportunity to escape her constricting home life. For whatever reason, she finally rebelled with a vengeance, choosing the least acceptable man—one that her parents were sure to hate. Maybe she just wanted to hurt them for her less than pleasant childhood. Maybe this was a way to ensure that they would stay out of her new life. We’ll probably never know her true motivations. Are we in sync so far, Partner?”

“We are,” Rick agreed taking up the narrative. “We could find no evidence of infidelity by either spouse during the brief marriage that ended in tragedy for Tom Austin. Everyone said that the couple appeared to be committed and happy, but they were really not into socializing very much because each had a demanding job. The Austins lost touch with any friends in Baltimore when they moved to Pennsylvania, and apparently, they did not make a great effort to foster friendships in their new neighborhood. Maybe that was because of the bi-racial element. Again, we don’t know what their mindset was.”

Now Rick handed the ball off to Stan, who continued where his partner left off.

“Okay—so the couple manages to get into debt up to their eyeballs by buying a house that proves to be a money pit because of necessary repairs. Jennifer can’t help with the finances because little Cassidy comes along, and then, not a year later, a baby boy adds to the stress. Hubby works like crazy to keep their heads above water financially and actually loses his life while trying to do so. Jennifer managed to get a bit of money from his insurance, but it certainly was not a windfall by any means, and she and the children are living on a shoestring.

We could find nobody that knew of a boyfriend who had recently come into the picture, and I think in this little neighborhood, someone would definitely notice if a strange car was parked in her driveway. The neighbors all appear to be benign without an agenda of any kind, and no one seemed bigoted or uncomfortable about a mixed couple residing on their street. 

Jennifer has stated that she knew of no enemies to either herself or her deceased husband. She never received any hate mail—that all started after the child’s death. She also admitted that she had no close friends nearby that she could have pissed off for some unfathomable reason, and she hadn’t tried to rekindle a reconciliation with her own family. Then, out of the blue, her daughter is violently murdered, most likely in a homicidal rage, perhaps directed not at the child, but at Jennifer herself.”

Now Stan waded in with the nuts and bolts that were not supposition. This is what they actually did know.

“The house was definitely not broken into because there was no sign of forced entry. The perp walked right in, most likely through the garage into the mudroom and beyond. He either had a key or knew the passcode to open those garage doors. This is the part that makes no sense—he just happens to be lurking about when Jennifer decides, on a whim, to go out and buy cigarettes. So, let’s say, for the sake of argument, that he is there somewhere in the bushes, and he sees her go. Then he brazenly walks through the house, leaves the little boy in his crib and only takes the girl. Maybe the child heard him and woke up, or maybe she was always the target.

Now that has always been a problem for me. How was a perp in the right place at the right time? If Jennifer’s actions were random, why was he even there unless he was waiting for her to go to bed? Maybe Jennifer was the original target. But, if that was the case, why didn’t the unsub wait for her to return, and then grab her in the garage after the doors came down again? 

We know that the little girl was hit repeatedly, probably beaten long after she had died. That’s rage in anybody’s book. Maybe the unsub was really pissed because he couldn’t get to the real object of his desire, so the little girl paid the price. I don’t think that he was a child predator. I think that he was someone hell bent on hurting Jennifer in any way that he could.”

“I’m with you so far,” Rick agreed. “Now let’s start eliminating, even if we’re just playing to our hunches about people. I am definitely ruling our Jennifer’s old lady. Granted, she’s a witch with a nasty agenda of issues, but I can’t see her suddenly, after all those years, deciding to do something about their feud. Besides, there’s the husband who needs constant watching, and I don’t see her leaving him for a trip to Pennsylvania that would take her at least a minimum of two hours round trip. And, undoubtedly, she would never have been given either a key or a passcode. Although Jennifer’s mother-in-law had both, the older Mrs. Austin has a solid alibi. She was in her own home in Baltimore twenty minutes later when the Baltimore police came to her house to escort her to Pennsylvania. 

Now, let’s talk about keys. The spare key was in the backyard shed when Jennifer went with us to retrieve it. I doubt that was the key which was used. Would a perpetrator carrying either a dead or a live two-year-old under his arm stop to put it back again? I don’t think so.

And, I’m not liking the scenario of the registered sex offender, Malcolm Jensen, making a duplicate months before during a routine oil change. That doesn’t fit his MO, and I’m apt to believe him when he said he had no idea whom we were even talking about.

This crime was not about kidnapping. It was not about sex. It was about anger and vengeance, and none of the nearby neighbors struck me as being that invested in the Austin family to wreak that kind of havoc. And, as for all the hate mail, well, you know a crime like this brings out all the crazies in mass. That just muddies the waters and provides a lot of red herrings.”

“So, you know where that leaves us—right?” Rick said the obvious.

“Yeah,” Stan answered tiredly, although he really didn’t want to believe it. “It leaves us with Jennifer, herself.” 

“Yeah, it does,” Rick agreed. “She’s a young woman under incredible stress with no safety net, no support system of any kind. She’s practically trapped in her own house with two little needy kids. Perhaps, she has a lot of rage bottled up inside that the most innocuous thing could unleash. Maybe the little girl cried too much that night, and Jennifer just snapped. I have never liked those temporary insanity pleas, but perhaps this one holds water. Let’s clue in our resident shrink, have him take an in-depth look, and give us his professional opinion of how stable or unstable Jennifer is, because we got nowhere else to go from here.”

Although the wheels were set in motion, that endeavor never came to pass, at least not then, because a new development took the case in an entirely different direction.


	9. Chapter 9

     The switchboard operator had forwarded the call directly to Stan Kostas because he was the senior detective working the Austin case. Jennifer Austin’s very distraught mother-in-law was almost hysterical in her panic on the other end of the line.

     “Something terrible has happened,” the older woman babbled from her cell phone. “Someone took Jennifer and little Noah.”

     After some calm and patient coaxing, Stan managed to ascertain that Mrs. Austin was currently at Jennifer Austin’s home in Pennsylvania and that there were some extremely terrifying developments going on in that little house on a hill.

     “Mrs. Austin,” Stan said urgently, “are you in any danger right now? Is someone there in that house with you making you fear for your life?”

     “No, no,” the older woman moaned, “but someone was here and did a vile thing, and now I think that he has my daughter-in-law and my little grandbaby!”

     “Ma’am,” Stan urged, “please leave that house immediately. Do not touch anything or look around any further. Just leave now, go to a neighbor’s home, or lock yourself in your car. I’m sending nearby patrolmen immediately. My partner and I are also going to be on our way and we will come to you. In the meantime, please stay on the line so that someone here at the station will continue to make sure that you are okay until we can get to you. Would you do that, please?”

     When Stan and Rick screeched to a halt in the small Emberton Court, three police cruisers were already there. The elder Mrs. Austin was seated in the back of the last car in the lineup. One of the local cops met the two detectives as they exited their vehicle.

     “We’ve already cleared the house, Detectives—all the rooms, the basement, and even the shed out back. We touched as little as possible so we wouldn’t contaminate any evidence. The old lady over there is really shook up, so it was hard to get a clear picture of what she might have touched when she was inside.”

     “Don’t tell us anything more about what’s in that house, Officer,” Stan cautioned. “My partner and I like to go in with fresh eyes to observe a scene just as it was left so that we can formulate our own first impressions.”

     Donning latex gloves and paper booties, Stan and Rick entered through the open garage and then through the connecting door to the kitchen. The first things that they noticed were two paper shopping bags bearing a local grocery store logo on the kitchen counter. The bottom of one was wet, and a cloudy viscous mixture had seeped out onto the Formica. When they looked inside the sacks, one contained various food cartons and a loaf of bread. The other held thawed packages of vegetables and a quart of ice cream that were now leaking their contents. There was a garish puddle of congealed red gunk on the kitchen floor—most likely the contents of the shattered jar of spaghetti sauce laying in the middle of it. Shards of the broken glass gleamed in the light from the overhead fluorescent fixture. The rest of the kitchen was tidy, with only a couple of baby bottles on the draining rack. However, the most compelling evidence that something was not right was also on the counter—Jennifer Austin’s cell phone blinking to indicate either missed calls or text messages. There was no sign of the young woman’s purse.

     The living room off the kitchen also was neat with nothing appearing to be out of kilter. A knitted afghan lay across the sofa and a magazine was on the coffee table. The double-hung windows, however, showed the aftermath of the intense downpour of rain a few days ago. The towels on the window ledge were sodden and could no longer hold the accumulated water that now had become a puddle on the hardwood floor. The wooden slats had buckled out of shape because of the moisture. Moving on to the children’s bedrooms, the detectives breathed a sigh of relief when they seemed undisturbed. However, when they entered the last room down the hall, things took on a different tone. Jennifer’s bedroom held a queen-sized unmade bed, but the message on the mirror in the connected bathroom was extremely disturbing.

 ** _“Bad Mother”_** had been scrawled across the surface in something dark and foreboding. The detectives’ first thought was that it was dried blood.

     There were no signs of a struggle, no bloody footprints or other overt splotches of blood or gore. Other than a clutter of makeup, a hairbrush, a blow dryer, and one lone toothbrush in a ceramic holder, nothing seemed disturbed.

     The carpet in the bedroom had the worn look of having years of traffic traverse its shallow pile, but no deep discernable tread patterns were visible to the naked eye. Likewise, there were only imprecise indentations in the linens on the bed. Ominously missing, however, were Jennifer and little Noah, and the woman’s purse and car.

     Next, the detectives talked with a clearly distraught mother-in-law, tearfully shredding a tissue in the back of the patrol car on the street.

     “Ma’am, can you tell us why you came here today?” Stan asked gently.

     “I’ve been calling and texting Jen for the last two days—well, three now, if you count today. At first, she didn’t answer or call me back, and I thought that was because she needed her space. I know that she’s been very depressed as we all have been, and I could understand if it was just too much for her to talk about it with me. So, I tried not to take offense or even panic when I didn’t hear from her. But, today was the third day, and I just couldn’t wait any longer to see for myself that she and Noah were okay. I hate that long drive on the interstate to get here from Baltimore, but something just told me to do it. I reasoned that an hour drive was not such a bad thing if it put my mind at ease.

     When I finally made it up here, I used my key to the front door when she didn’t answer the doorbell. I called out to her and then looked in all the rooms to make sure that she hadn’t gotten hurt and couldn’t answer. Actually, maybe I was thinking the worst, you know—like maybe she might have been so depressed that she had done something drastic. But then, well, I’m sure that you saw what was on her bathroom mirror, and I knew that a terrible thing had happened to her and Noah.”

     That long statement was all that the elderly woman could manage before wrenching sobs ultimately overwhelmed her. Stan instructed one of the patrolmen to take her back to the station, get her something to eat and drink and make her comfortable. Then a BOLO was issued for Jennifer Austin’s six-year-old silver Subaru Outback, and another Amber Alert for missing ten-month-old Noah. The accompanying picture of the little boy was so generic that he looked like any other infant with a soft, round face with nothing to make him distinctive or memorable. Jennifer’s picture obtained from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s licensing bureau also went out over the wire alerting the public that this woman was presumed to be missing and could be the victim of foul play. The forensics team was called in once again to this house of tragedy, and Stan and Rick could only hope that two more bodies wouldn’t be discovered in another cornfield.


	10. Chapter 10

     Twelve hours into this new perplexing case, the detectives were no closer to finding Jennifer and Noah Austin. It was as if something nebulous had swallowed them up and removed them from the face of the earth. That was not to say that the investigators hadn’t amassed some information, even if it wasn’t exactly new.

     The forensics team again found no signs of forced entry into the house. The fingerprints that they lifted were little different from what had been initially found when little Cassidy went missing. Flakes tediously teased from the message on the bathroom mirror did indeed prove to be dried blood, and it matched Jennifer’s DNA sample that the detectives had collected early on when Cassidy was murdered.

      Jennifer’s cell phone showed only the recent activity of phone calls and texts from her mother-in-law. At first, the messages were predictable—“Please call me back when you get a chance.” As the days turned over, the tone became more concerned—“Jen, please get in touch. You’re beginning to worry me now.” That cell phone was the only means of communication for Jennifer since she had disconnected the landline after Cassidy’s murder. She had done that, no doubt, to avoid harassing calls at all hours of the night.

     The grocery bags on the counter contained a register tape with a date and time stamp. Jennifer had gone food shopping on the day of the monsoon rains. The food chain a few miles away was a busy one, and the clerk who scanned and bagged her order could not recall seeing her or the baby. Likewise, none of the neighbors had noticed the silver Subaru leave or return that day.

     The closet and chest of drawers in Jennifer’s bedroom looked as if her clothes had been left behind. There were no empty hangers in the closet or voids in the piles of underwear in the drawers to indicate that she had intentionally packed to leave. The baby’s room still had the diaper bag on the changing table, and a full pack of disposable diapers was nestled on the shelf beneath it. A cabinet in the kitchen contained baby bottles lined up like soldiers with no empty spaces, as well as jars of strained baby food.

     They did get a break when a warrant got them footage from the local bank’s ATM. They found themselves looking at a grainy picture of Jennifer in a hooded rain slicker withdrawing the maximum amount of $500 from her savings account, leaving just a little under one hundred dollars. Her checking account was meager, as well, with only $268.32. This transaction took place on the same day of her disappearance, barely an hour after she had left the supermarket.

     “It’s hard to tell if she looks like she’s under any duress,” Rick remarked to his partner.

     “Yeah, you’re right. It’s difficult to make out her features,” Stan agreed. “But if some evil dude is sitting in her car holding her child, I’ll bet she would put on the performance of her life.”

     “So, you think that she was definitely abducted?” Rick asked. The young detective had a profound respect for his older partner’s gut instincts.

     Stan sighed loudly. “What I’m thinking is, _if_ she was taken against her will, her kidnapper was already in the house waiting for her when she got home. Which begs the question—where is _his_ car? Our guys have scoured the area and haven’t found any abandoned vehicles. Maybe the abductor had an accomplice.”

     Stan threw up his hands in frustration. “Damn it, this is like the original case all over again! We keep asking ourselves the same question of how did Houdini arrive at the house and then get in as slick as you please without anybody noticing? Now we have the mystery of the missing woman’s car and its occupants after that ATM withdrawal. It’s as if they simply vanished into thin air. We’ve contacted the tristate area’s highway monitoring sites asking them to search their traffic cams for a sighting of her Subaru but, so far, that’s been a bust as well. She and Noah are still gone, totally off the grid. To our knowledge at this point in time, Jennifer Austin has no phone, and her credit cards have not been used. Just how many ways can you say ‘dead end?’”

     “So, you're leaning towards _dead_?” Rick asked softly.

     “I don’t know what to think at this point,” Stan admitted. “Like I said before when we were investigating little Cassidy’s murder, we need to find a motive. That’s what’s missing. Without a motive—some kind of reason, however far-fetched—it’s hard to know where to start looking. In my mind, nothing is ever random. I am just not buying into that. Some damn thing is missing, and I don’t have a clue what it is.”

     Rick’s forehead furrowed in thought. “Well, we’ve almost definitely ruled out kidnapping for ransom. The Austin didn’t have much money, and the in-laws are comfortable but not all that well heeled. That leaves reprisal by an unknown person. We’ve worked the bigotry angle, but it seems to me that it was all the publicity of the original crime that brought those ugly trolls out of the woodwork. Nobody seemed to have had an issue with the couple when they worked in Baltimore or when they moved here. The only avenue that we didn’t explore was if Jennifer might have had a stalker from her previous life before she was married—maybe a spurned past lover or something.”

     “Yeah, I guess that’s a possibility,” Stan said wearily. “We’ll talk to that less than gracious mother of hers again, and her coworkers at the hospital as well as her in-laws. Her husband had a couple of sisters who were about Jennifer’s age, so maybe she confided in them at some point. We have the family laptop, so we’ll get the techs to check that for some kind of social media account like Facebook or Twitter to get a line on anyone who might have been harassing or bad-mouthing her. If you come up with any other inspirations, partner, please let me know.”

     Jennifer’s laptop was not the treasure trove of insightful goodies that the detectives had hoped. She had no social media account of any kind, which seemed strange. You would think that a housebound mother would want to connect with friends, even if it was just to show off pictures of her kids. A search of her browsing history showed mundane sites like Pinterest and eBay. She usually perused crafting ideas on the first one and browsed used children’s toys on the other. The only off-the-wall searches were for information on autism. To the detectives’ knowledge, neither of the Austin children had been diagnosed with that. Did the young mother, who had been trained as a nurse, have suspicions about one of her kids? Maybe a talk with their pediatrician might clarify that, although the police knew that they would undoubtedly be mired down in the HIPPA laws.

     To their surprise, the Austin’s family doctor was forthcoming without violating any private medical data. He simply stated, quite emphatically, that the two children under his care were normal and healthy in _every_ respect. So, the investigators still had an unanswered question—why was Jennifer interested in researching that subject? For the moment, that peculiar puzzle was tabled as the detectives visited the missing woman’s mother once again.

     “Ma’am, to your knowledge did your daughter have a relationship with any young men before she left home,” Rick Schrader asked as politely as he could when he and Stan were forced to revisit that sad little Baltimore house filled with hostility.

     “Jennifer wasn’t allowed to date. We didn’t permit any of that nonsense,” her mother retorted. “She needed to focus on her studies, not worry about nagging us to buy her prom dresses. But, she was an ungrateful child. We paid for that hoity-toity nursing degree, and what thanks did we get in return? Nothing, that’s what! Daughters are supposed to take care of their parents when they get old. It’s only fair ‘cause we took care of her when she was growing up. But no—the first chance that she got she ran off to get out of her responsibilities. That’s just Jennifer all over. She takes and takes and never gives back!”

     It was a bit easier talking to Jennifer’s mother-in-law and sisters-in-law.

     “I wouldn’t say that we were especially close,” the older Mrs. Austin admitted. “It wasn’t as if we called each other every day. But, please don’t misunderstand—there weren’t any problems between us. We never argued about anything or exchanged cross words. It was just that Jennifer seemed to be a private person, and I respected that.”

     “I don’t think that Jen was ever really comfortable around our loud, rambunctious crowd when we all got together,” one of the sisters-in-law chimed in. “I’m not saying that she was a snob or anything like that. I think that we simply overwhelmed her. Maybe being an only child was a quieter life for her, and it was hard for her to adapt.”

     “But she really didn’t seem to make an effort,” the other less charitable sister-in-law offered her impression. “We tolerated her aloofness because of Tom. My brother was besotted with her and very protective, so we never criticized.”

     “Could she have been in a relationship with someone after your brother died?” Stan addressed the more outspokenly candid of the ladies who sat sedately sipping tea in the kitchen.

     All three women pondered this for a bit until finally, the older sister responded.

     “I guess anything is possible, but I really don’t know where she would have met somebody or when she would have had the time to be in a relationship. I have two kids as well, and some days I don’t even get to wash my hair or have lunch sitting at the table.”

     Now the older Mrs. Austin had her say. “Detectives, my daughter-in-law may not have been all warm and relaxed around us, but it was obvious that she loved my son very much,” she said with certainty. “And she loved those children, too, and was a good mother. This past year, I have lost my son, my husband, and my granddaughter. I don’t think that I could stand losing anyone else. Please find Jen and little Noah and bring them home to us.”

     That was exactly what Stan and Rick were trying to do, but it just wasn’t happening.


	11. Chapter 11

   The mayor of the tiny hamlet in Pennsylvania was instrumental in setting up a “Go Fund Me” account for the missing Austin family members. To date, almost $15,000 had been raised as a tantalizing reward for anyone who had knowledge that led to the safe return of Jennifer and Noah. Of course, the FBI had their own hotline, as did the local precinct, and calls came in regularly to both switchboards. Those manning the calls had to sift through the cranks who claimed that the weirdo that lived near them was probably the culprit. These callers had no hard proof, just a gut instinct that their crotchety, nasty neighbor was certainly capable of such a thing. Calls also came in from other states—some as far away as California. Even psychics took their turns monopolizing valuable time. The “Go Fund Me” account grew, but, so far, nobody could claim it yet. The trail remained frigidly cold with not the slightest bit of insight into the baffling disappearance.

     Stan Kostas and Rick Schrader were still doggedly connected to the case, not willing to admit defeat as the days turned into weeks. However, it was very painful for them to have to tell the hopeful Austin family each day when they called that there were no leads in the perplexing case of a missing daughter-in-law and a little grandson. In frustration, one afternoon the two detectives decided to return to the small house on Emberton Court to have yet another look. Maybe, just maybe, they might find—well, _something_.

     This time, the detectives split up—each taking a room to toss. They opened drawers in the bedrooms and bathrooms and riffled through the contents looking for anything that did not seem to belong. They upended the mattresses on the two beds as well as the crib. They thoroughly searched nooks and cupboards in the kitchen, fanned the pages of a set of cookbooks, and removed all the ice cubes from the bin in the freezer section of the refrigerator. The house was small, so it didn’t take long. Then, together, both men went to the basement, slitting open old moving boxes still cinched with packing tape. All they found were household odds and ends most likely from Tom and Jennifer’s previous residence that had never found a proper place in this home. Now the two detectives traded places, with each man giving another perusal of the already searched rooms. It was plodding, steady Stan who made a discovery of sorts.

     In the master bedroom, there was a plain pine blanket chest at the foot of Jennifer’s bed. Initially, Rick had opened it when searching that room and had found an assortment of extra sheets and a crocheted afghan. Stan had seen the same thing when he lifted the lid a second time, but instead of running his hands down the sides and underneath the pile of linens, he had dumped everything onto the floor. It was then that he noticed small half circles had been cut from the wood at the farthest ends of the bottom panel. These unusual spaces were just the right size for someone to insert part of a finger so that the false bottom of the chest could be lifted. When the sheet of plywood was removed, Stan’s eyes fell on something that he least expected to see.

     There were two books inside what was to become a Pandora’s Box. One was an old-fashioned marbleized copybook with juvenile stickers of cute little puppies and kittens festooning the cover. Stan gently untied the blue ribbon that encircled it and found that the interior lined pages had yellowed with time, and many were precariously brittle. The handwriting inside was large and loopy as if written by a primary school youngster. Stan curiously scanned a few pages and concluded that this was a childhood diary of sorts, most likely Jennifer Austin’s. A very unhappy young girl had poured out her misery and angst while growing up in an overbearingly authoritative home. She chronicled the rigid rules that precluded her from having friends come to visit, being able to select her own clothes, or watching television on a weeknight. Each entry ended with a sad, frowny face or a heart with a jagged line down its center. Sometimes the page concluded with the angry sentiment—“I hate you, Mother, and I hate you, too, Daddy, for not standing up for me!”

     The second “book” was really no more than a modern three ring binder holding a copious amount of pages printed from a computer. The face sheet made the reader aware that this was the adult version of Jennifer’s journal—an account that started where that elementary school copybook left off, and continued, with dated entries, to just before little Cassidy was killed. This was Jennifer’s life story laid bare—an intimate look into the mindset of a person that the detectives could not seem to get a read on during their investigation.

     All through their interactions with her after Cassidy’s murder, Jennifer had seemed locked away and waiflike on some ethereal plane—not exactly cold and uncaring, but aloof and solitary. Was that her normal demeanor, or was she just weighted down in the depths of grief? Nobody seemed to truly understand or feel a connection with Jennifer, so how could the detectives know what was “normal” for her? Even her in-laws and her neighbors admitted that they felt as if they didn’t really know her. However, it was now very clear that the real Jennifer had been hiding herself away in these pages.

     The journal was taken back to the precinct where both detectives read through the emotional and telling entries several times, as did the in-house shrink. The three men discussed the intuitive and analytical passages, and parsed many sentences over and over. Now the wall around Jennifer Austin began to come tumbling down, but that just created a lot more questions.


	12. Part Two: Jennifer's Story

     Jennifer Austin proved to be a very talented and readable author who captured your interest and made you want to keep turning the pages. She had prefaced her story, written soon after her husband’s death, with quite a poignant caveat.

_“I don’t know why I feel compelled to write down the dreary saga that was, and continues to be, my life story. I do not intend that anyone will ever read this account, but I just have to get it all down on paper in actual words. That will make it real and not a skewed fiction in my head spawned by wisps of faulty memories. With no one peering over my shoulder, I can be brutally honest, not feeling that it is necessary to defend or justify myself. This is my catharsis. Catholics kneel in a small cubicle and confess to an anonymous priest on the other side of a screen. I admit my imperfections, pernicious thoughts, and wistful longings to a blank page—that is my confessional. As I re-read what is now in black and white, I realize that page after page has suddenly become filled with all the remorseless anger kept at bay within my soul. Finally letting it out doesn’t make it better; paradoxically, it just makes me feel empty and hollow. But, this is something that I must do—this relating of an ugly past. It is certainly not a pretty tale, but it is mine, and I must own it if I ever want to be free!”_

    

     After that sobering prelude, the creation of the person who was to become Jennifer Austin unfolded.

_“The very first recollection that I can retrieve from my earliest years is being rigidly silent in our household. I had to be ‘very quiet’ because Mommy didn’t feel good and was resting. Back then, my mother was always sick with some vague ailment that she called ‘tired blood,’ which manifested itself, she claimed, as a result of having given birth to me. Apparently, our family physician never found any signs of anemia, so Mother resorted to visiting a homeopathic practitioner instead. I very much doubt that he had a medical degree. As a young pre-school age child, I can recall going with her to this strange little hole-in-the-wall shop on Saratoga Street in downtown Baltimore. That place was scary to a little kid—dark and dank and harboring unpleasant smells. The wrinkled old man behind the counter would listen to my mother’s professed symptoms and then mix up a mysterious tincture in a little brown bottle. My mother took it religiously for years. You would think that, after a while, she would have stopped guzzling the strange stuff when the hoped-for results never materialized. Instead, she still insisted that she was suffering, and languished in her bed like a frail invalid._

_Now, as I look back with a medically educated adult’s perspective, I think illness may have been a ploy on her part to gain attention. Perhaps I should be charitable and give her the benefit of the doubt. If you tell yourself something long enough, you begin to believe it. Maybe she really was experiencing unexplained fatigue, or perhaps not. Maybe her inertia was the result of depression and a manifestation of a psychiatric disorder in which a person feigns an ailment to gain sympathy._

_Whatever the root of her problem, Mother didn’t achieve her objective. My father turned a deaf ear to her never-ending complaints, and I was too young to buy into her game. I simply continued to be as quiet as I could. I would whisper to my stuffed animals in lieu of other children from the neighborhood who could never visit. I would watch cartoons on a television with muted sound. I would make get well cards with fat Crayola crayons. I really tried my best to be good and to atone for making my mother sick._

_I now suspect that my father must have had his own twinges of guilt as well—not regarding my mother, but rather centering on me. It was common knowledge that he had very much wanted a son, and even as a young child, I knew that I was a disappointment. Talk about coming into this world with two strikes against you before ever getting up to bat! I had ruined my mother’s health and had thwarted my father’s dreams. Maybe that was why Dad tried to mold me into some semblance of a boy. I was his willing foil, spending entire Saturdays in his basement workshop. I had my own small hammer and practiced for hours pounding ten-penny nails into pieces of discarded plywood. I watched football games with him on Sunday afternoons while my mother rested, and learned to catch a baseball with my own, tiny mitt during the warm days of spring and summer. I was determined to do my penance for being a female and to ultimately make my Daddy happy._

_But, unfortunately, my parents were never truly happy—to this day, I can’t remember a single instance when they shared a warm embrace or smiled with fondness at one another. I can, however, remember the heated screaming matches, the pots and the dishes that were thrown, the metal potato masher that was used as a weapon, and the doors that were slammed. Afterwards, our house would sink into that god-awful silence once more. My parents wouldn’t speak to each other for weeks at a time, and I dared not utter a word._

_I cannot remember what the substance of most of these quarrels entailed, just the malicious words that were meant to wound. I usually hid in my room during these frightening times, covered my ears, and longed for that blessed silence. However, one Sunday afternoon when I was just a youngster of four or five, I was dragged, front and center, into one of my parents’ more violent ones. That was my mother’s doing. She yanked me up from the floor of my bedroom, told me that she and Daddy couldn’t stay together anymore, and that I had to choose with whom I wanted to live._

_Even now, I can still feel my gut-wrenching fear, my trembling, and the hot tears streaming down my face. I also remember my complete inability to make a sound. Unbelievably, that made my mother even more livid, and with a spiteful ‘well, little lady, you have made your choice,’ she left the house and didn’t come back. Of course, my father and I both suspected her flight would take her back to her own nearby parents, but that was little consolation to a guilt-ridden daughter._

_Nonetheless, it seemed that my father had acquired me by default and was now in a quandary. He had to go to work the following morning and he certainly couldn’t leave me alone. So, I was packed off to live with his mother until, later in the week, a tentative peace was negotiated and the warring parties and one casualty of that conflict returned to a quiet house._

_These fractures of a marriage were frequent, and a great portion of my pre-school childhood was spent being shunted from grandparent to grandparent. When I was old enough to attend school, the occurrences lessened, most likely because it would have been difficult ferrying me back and forth to the elementary school in my neighborhood. However, past sentiments that were uttered could not be unsaid, and past events that had transpired couldn’t be erased from a child’s memory. My formative years were stormy, distressing ones, and I’m sure that contributed to a form of social stunting. I became a taciturn and resentful child who couldn’t seem to figure out how to act around ‘normal’ people._

_When I was older, I became just as much of a target for my mother’s wrath. She was the epitome of a ‘helicopter’ mother, always hovering to make sure that my homework was perfect and my grades were acceptable. I had to present each returned test for her perusal, and feared her response if they were not up to her rigid standards. I think that I was about ten years old when, in exasperation, I actually raised my voice for the first time to argue that the ‘B’ on a test wasn’t that terrible, and that she should stop pestering me. Unexpectedly, my mother backhanded me across the face. Her wedding band landed near my eye, which gradually blackened as the afternoon wore on. I hoped that my father would see her handiwork when he came home and take my side in the argument. Instead, he chose the path of least resistance, simply erecting that tried-and-true wall of silence that was his weapon against my mother’s out-of-control actions. I felt betrayed and alone!_

_The hallmark of my parent’s separations occurred when I was thirteen, and I think it affected me so deeply because I was going through my own beginnings of teenage angst brought on by burgeoning hormones. It had become my custom to walk the short mile to school each morning and afternoon. I left one morning at 8:30 AM and had an uneventful day. When I reached home later in the afternoon, it was to a house devoid of every stick of furniture. Apparently, my mother had an agenda that she hadn’t shared. Like a patient spider in a web, she had plotted a revenge against my father and waited until she had all of her ducks in a row. In just six hours, every household article had been removed and transported to a small apartment ten miles away in my maternal grandparents’ neighborhood. I hadn’t discerned even an inkling of her intentions and was blindsided, as I’m sure my father was when he later got home from work._

_This separation seemed more permanent, and, for the first time in her life, my mother was forced to take a job. She traveled each day to downtown Baltimore to a receptionist job at a car dealership. I took a public transit bus to school that slowly meandered down Route 1 making frequent, tedious stops. It took an hour to get anywhere near my school even though it would have only taken twenty minutes by car. In the afternoons, I started preparing dinner when I got home from school because my mother demanded a hot meal when she returned from her tough day of answering a phone and greeting prospective car customers._

_This routine went on for six long months. My father dutifully came to fetch me on the occasional Saturday or Sunday. We would usually go out to a restaurant for dinner, but we definitely never discussed the elephant in the room. That’s just how you handled things in our world—you retreated into silence about the really big, important issues._

_On one occasion, my Dad had forgotten something at home and we made a stop at the house where I grew up. I was appalled when I saw that he was sleeping on an old army cot and had just one small pot sitting beside a hotplate. There were dust bunnies rolling around the hardwood floors like tumbleweeds, and the bathroom was beyond filthy. The next time that he came to pick me up, I was armed with a bucket, a mop, and a vacuum cleaner and diligently set to work. I was just too embarrassed to see my father in such dire straits._

_At some point, my mother finally capitulated regarding their estrangement. I don’t know if the novelty of being on her own and having to work had worn off, or if she had really forgiven my father for whatever his transgression may have been. Apparently, there were terms that had been hammered out during the negotiations. Dad’s contrition had been a remodeling of our very dated kitchen. Once that was accomplished, my mother quit her job, gathered our furniture and me, and returned home like a victorious gladiator strutting around the Roman coliseum._

_Things stayed on an even keel for a time, and I matriculated on to high school. I was a good student but a solitary loner with no best friends, either male or female. There were only familiar faces that passed in and out of my activities and classes, but no one in particular with whom I chose to share my innermost thoughts. I preferred to put those sentiments down on paper even back then, writing depressing and tormented poetry that my English teachers loved. That endeavor got me the editorship of the school’s first literary magazine. The little soft-backed edition was given out at the end of the school year along with the yearbook, and I’m sure most copies were relegated to the trash bin before the students ever left the campus._

_I also decided to try my hand at sports competition because of my mother’s insistent urging. Apparently, she had been something of a female jock in her heyday and had attained varsity status in both softball and basketball. In defiance, I tried out for the volleyball team. During my less than stellar athletic career, I never made it out of the junior varsity league, and in retaliation, my mother never came to watch even one game._

_As a young adolescent girl nearing womanhood, my interactions with my father began to diminish. Woodworking in the basement and watching football games hadn’t really brought us any closer over the years, and I began to suspect that the bond that I so desperately desired had all been nothing more than a kid’s pipedream. Now it seemed as if I had nothing in common with either him or my mother. I perceived my parents as narrow-minded, bigoted and insular—the kind of people who were smugly comfortable in their little niche and who would never change. I had to be the one to move on and forge my own different kind of path. Thus, the dreams that crammed my head were now thoughts of release from my crippling life._

_My fellow students had their escape routes all planned with the advent of college acceptances. I could vicariously visualize those various, sprawling campuses with their ivied walls, the frat and sorority houses with Greek symbols, the raucous student mixers, and the messy dorm rooms. If I were enrolled in some faraway sanctuary, I would be starting with a blank slate and could become my own better and happier person. However, that was not to be. The young girl who delivered the valedictorian speech on graduation night would not be going anywhere. I would still be a prisoner in my home, fleeing for only a part of each day to a community college twenty minutes from home where I sought a nursing degree._

_My parents never let me forget the hardship entailed in purchasing a little ten-year-old Volkswagen Golf, now essential for me to commute to my classes. It had over a hundred thousand miles on the dashboard readout, and its reliability was iffy in cold weather. Nonetheless, it got me away from the house, and I treated it like my baby by religiously washing and waxing it and vacuuming its tattered interior._

_Community college brought many new faces into focus for me, mostly female, and that was enough to make me more than a bit nervous. I still had difficulty relating to other young woman. Our class was a small one, so it went without saying that I would have to interact with my fellow students in some fashion. That was made a bit easier when we were paired alphabetically for labs and floor duty. My partner was Chloe Petersen, and she was a shock to me on so many levels._

_Chloe was the last child born into her family that already had four boys. She was indulged by her parents and her brothers, and she stretched those limits to the max. She projected a hard ‘Goth’ persona with her long hair dyed jet black, and piercings in her nose and tongue as well as dotting the entire shells of both ears. Her makeup looked as if it had been applied with a trowel, and she penciled in thick black eyebrows and ringed her violet eyes with crayon-like kohl liners._

_Instead of being put off by her bizarre appearance, I found myself intrigued. Later, I would come to realize that this was Chloe’s way of hiding behind a persona, just as I hid behind a wall of sullenness and feigned disinterest. However, her behavior at the time bordered on deliciously outrageous, and I silently cheered her on from the sidelines. We became inseparable—the two odd people who just didn’t fit into the jigsaw puzzle of conformity. I took her side in battles, and she went to bat for me. When my parents threw me out of the house after I told them that I was marrying Tom, it was my best friend rather than my future husband who arrived the next day in her Land Rover and helped me load my belongings into the back as I made my getaway. Chloe was my rock during those early years as I endeavored to come to terms with who I was and who I ultimately wanted to be. Needless to say, I loved her for it. Eventually, however, my insecure devotion skewed in the direction of the man who became my husband._

_In the darkness of untold solitary nights, I struggle to unravel the knot of my motivation to marry the man that I did. You would think that all those psych classes would have given me the tools to figure it out. However, psychiatric nursing courses just provided more questions than answers because, in my opinion, the milieu of psychiatry was mostly educated guess work with few definitive diagnoses._ _So, my best “guess” as to why I became Mrs. Tom Austin still remains murky and I’ve never really arrived at a concrete answer._

     _I certainly didn’t have any experience in the dating department before Tom showed an interest in me. That lack of expertise was not surprising because my teenage aloofness tended to put high school boys off, and they gave me a wide berth. Some callous and malicious ones even sniggered that I was a lesbian._

     _Tom, however, was the epitome of patience and kindness and so very unlike my parents and nasty classmates. Eventually, when he took me home to meet his family, it was an eye-opening experience, to say the least. Here was a solid unit of people who actually liked each other and enjoyed spending time together. During communal gatherings, they laughed and good-naturedly teased each other with no undermining agenda or passive-aggressive ill will. They made me feel welcome, even though I was a complete outcast in so many ways._

 _This acceptance was what I desperately wanted, so perhaps I married Tom for his attractively stable family. Of course, that never seemed to work out either. I knew that I should have become secure enough to let my guard down, but I just could not stop myself from waiting for the other shoe to drop._ _I intuitively perceived that the Austins really didn’t understand me, even though, for Tom’s sake, they gracefully tolerated my quirkiness._

_On the flipside of the coin, perhaps I married Tom in an ultimate act of a rebellion that had been brewing inside of me for years. Finally, like molten lava exploding from an awakening Vesuvius, it all came hurtling out into the air. This choice that I had made could hurt my parents in the most basic of ways, and I reveled in their outrage because now they would certainly be out of my life forever. Surely, that was what I wanted, wasn’t it—the ultimate payback?_

_Those psych classes also expounded on various and sundry tenets, such as a girl usually tends to seek a mate who is like her father, and a boy, his mother. I thought that I was an exception to the rule. My father was inclined to kowtow to my mother, if only to make her shut up and to restore some sort of equilibrium. My mother was the dominant force, and my father more subservient. The most hurtful thing was that he never stood up for me._

_Naively, I saw Tom as his own man, strong and loving, who would always defend and take care of me. I could feel secure knowing that he would fix all the problems and tell me things were going to be okay. After marriage, I realized that I saw what I had wanted to see. In truth, my husband was quite passive, would do anything to avoid an argument, and would give in to me without a whimper. He certainly was not some bold and brave knight in shining armor. Instead, he was a younger embodiment of my own father._

_I also discovered that my idol with feet of clay had weaknesses that manifested themselves when he became overwhelmed. I witnessed that when we quickly sunk into debt with our house. Then Tom gladly ceded the overseeing of the finances to me, no doubt expecting me to pull a rabbit out of a hat to fix them. I certainly didn’t want to be the fixer—the dominant force in this marriage—but my husband was insidiously forcing that role upon me._

_An unplanned pregnancy sent me into a panic. Tom refused to see how this monumental event would impact our lives. All I could think was that nothing good could come of this. Tom, however, strutted around in blissful oblivion as happy as a clam. I was actually terrified of impending motherhood, fearing that I would make mistakes that would have this child hating me for my ineptitude. When the female sex of the baby was confirmed, I was now more sure than ever that I would be a failure._ _A well-meaning matron attending my baby shower felt compelled to warn me that ‘now your life will never be the same.’ When she saw the horrified look that must have been on my face, she quickly sought to ally my fears by adding the verbal footnote—‘But it will change in a good way, Jennifer.’_   _She couldn’t have been more wrong._

_Cassidy came into this world screaming and demanding, and this would remain her temperament from that day onward. She never seemed content, and nothing that I did could console her. Tom, however, seemed to have the magic touch, and I silently resented how this tiny, needy infant immediately bonded with him instead of her own mother._

_Cassidy seemed to reject me from the very onset of our relationship after a long, uncomfortable pregnancy and a difficult delivery. When I held her, she would root frantically for my breast but fail to latch on properly. The lactation specialist at the hospital claimed that some newborns needed practice, even though sucking is a natural reflex for them. Well, we practiced and practiced around the clock with both my baby and I becoming more and more frustrated. When projectile vomiting ensued, I gave up the fight and turned to formula. This perverse little girl avidly gobbled it down and slept with a tiny smile on her lips. It was almost as if she was mocking me for my pitiful, unskilled efforts, and the seeds of our future relationship were sown and took root from that rocky beginning._

_To say that Cassidy was a temperamental and unhappy child would be an understatement. She glowered instead of smiling, and tantrums were her stock in trade. She would stiffen when I would try to settle her onto my lap for a hug, and refused to make eye contact when I spoke to her. She refused to utter even the simplest word, preferring to imperiously point to whatever she wanted. I felt like such a failure when I saw other mothers with their ‘normal’ little ones. My sisters-in-law were quite blasé around their broods, and even when the kids misbehaved, they just quickly sorted things out until their children were happy and blissful once more. Even my next-door neighbor juggled all of her kids with aplomb, unfailingly confident and successful in her role of nurturing parent._

_So, was it me who was at fault, or was Cassidy the root of this parental disconnect? For whatever reason, we were like two sparring sides in a day-to-day conflict. I’m not quite sure what was going on in her head, but mine was filled with insecurity and fear during our skirmishes. She was capable of pointing out my inadequacies, and I felt pathetic when I actually grew to dislike my own child._

_The intellectual side of me eventually began to suspect that something might be wrong with this challenging little girl. Because I was much too embarrassed to seek advice about my suspicions from her pediatrician, I did some research on my own. I began with the gamut of autism. Most assuredly, Cassidy exhibited many of the symptoms of this complex neurodevelopmental disorder, but, as a rule, they were only manifested around me and not her father. And imagine my chagrin when I discovered that I fit neatly into some of the categories of symptoms much more so than my daughter—namely, the inability to assimilate normal social relationships. If I wanted to stretch the point, I even displayed one of the hallmarks of autism—that of repetitive behavior. Didn’t I continually make the same bad mistakes over and over, like incorporating the same dynamic of my childhood into my marriage? And didn’t I etch yet another tick mark in that column when I made the mistake of quickly becoming pregnant once again._

_If there is a God orchestrating everyone’s life, perhaps He felt sorry for me and that is why He sent sweet, little Noah. Being omnipotent, God knew that I would never intentionally bear another child after Cassidy. From the moment of his conception, it seemed as if this new baby was trying to make up for his sister’s turmoil by being placid and calm. I felt physically healthy during this pregnancy with no debilitating morning sickness, as was the case the first time around. Noah also came into this world quickly, thus sparing me the unpleasantness of a prolonged childbirth. He was most content when he could nestle peacefully in my arms and stare at my face as if memorizing its planes and contours. He was everything that Cassidy was not._

_Nonetheless, caring for an infant and a toddler almost singlehandedly was very difficult. It seemed as if Tom was always working and never here, and I longed for adult companionship and moral support on the home front. That loneliness found me wishing my life away by imagining the children older so that I could return to work and interact with peers. Now it seemed that the only adult connection to the outside world was the occasional dinner with Tom’s folks. Without fail, they never-endingly commiserated and fussed over the long hours that he had to work to support his family. They didn’t actually say it, but I knew that they blamed me for becoming pregnant and causing Tom’s tedious hardship. One of my sisters-in-law even had the audacity to suggest that I give birth control pills a try._

_Then there came the ultimate betrayal. This man whom I had promised to marry for life deserted me in the most devastating way. I felt abandoned and adrift after Tom’s sudden death just like the many times that I had felt abandoned when my own parents relegated me into my grandparents’ care when they separated time and again. To give them credit, Tom’s family was there for me at first, but then they became mired down in their own extended grief when my father-in-law also passed away._

_Now I felt trapped in a maze, and my nightly dreams were of being lost and not finding my way out. Sometimes, I knew that I should be somewhere and I was late, but I couldn’t find where I needed to be, and I just became more panicked. I would wake up gasping for breath and soaked in sweat. At other times, I dreamed that I had lost some object and I was frantically searching everywhere to find it. Of course, I was always unsuccessful in all my attempts to bring harmony to my psyche. It was clear that my life was out of control, and I had daytime fantasies of just getting into my car by myself and driving until the gas ran out._

_My days with the children were performed by rote and assumed the sameness no matter what the day of the week—bathing, feeding, children’s television shows, naptimes and, of course, crying. Cassidy would never cut me any slack, and when I couldn’t stand it anymore, I would lock myself in my bedroom with Noah and cover my ears as this belligerent child wailed and pounded on my door with her fists and feet. One time, she continued nonstop until she made herself throw up, and I think, at that moment, I truly hated her.”_


	13. Chapter 13

     Stan Kostas and Rick Schrader sat in a precinct conference room with long-cold cups of coffee on the table in front of them. Dr. Jeffrey Templeton, an in-house FBI psychiatrist on loan from the Bureau, had joined them for the brainstorming discussion that was taking place. He, too, had read Jennifer Austin’s journal several times from cover to cover and had made copious notes on his legal pad. However, until the two detectives asked for his professional opinion, he would defer to them and hear their theories. Stan was the one throwing out a possible scenario at present.

     “I no longer believe that Jennifer Austin is an innocent victim, and I don’t think that she was abducted this time around. I think it’s all a smokescreen that she orchestrated to throw us off by keeping an unknown phantom assailant in the forefront of our investigation. I’m beginning to give credence to the theory that she is responsible for little Cassidy’s death. Maybe it wasn’t intentional. Maybe the kid just kept pushing her mother’s buttons until Jennifer snapped and lashed out at her. The coroner said that the little girl was literally pummeled to death by someone in a frenzy. I’m thinking that at some point after the beating, Jennifer came to her senses, realized what she had done, and knew that she had to cover her tracks. So, she disposed of the body in a nearby cornfield and then made that hysterical 911 call.”

     His partner, Rick, let this hang in the air for a second, and then he posed his own question.

     “Do you think this mother is truly heartless enough to dump her daughter’s lifeless little body onto the cold ground and then nonchalantly stop for cigarettes on the way back home?”

      Stan’s forehead wrinkled in deep thought. “Maybe it could have been a premediated act of violence, or maybe it just got out of control all of a sudden,” he mused. “Whatever the circumstances, afterwards Jennifer found that she had to improvise on the fly to come up with a credible story. Nobody can say what was going through her head at that moment. Perhaps in the aftermath, she found that she enjoyed all the attention of having people suddenly swarming around her with words of comfort and support. Or, maybe she got some kind of perverted pleasure out of watching us chase our tails. Now that the drama has faded a bit, perhaps she felt the need to manufacture more intrigue so that the attention stayed on her. So, she staged another crime scene.”

     Rick had a worried expression on his face.

     “Well, that makes you wonder how safe the little boy is if he is with her, which I assume is the case if she fled voluntarily. If we believe what Jennifer wrote in her journal, she favored Noah. However, if this mother is unstable, would she harm him if he managed to get on her nerves? Isn’t there some kind of syndrome for that, Doc?”

     Both men turned to stare at the quiet shrink in the room as if he were some wise oracle with all the answers.

     “Yes, Detectives, there is a term for a situation in which a parent intentionally and systematically harms a child in order to gain attention from medical personnel. It’s called Munchhausen by proxy. However, according to your background check, there is no mention that any hospital physician or even their own pediatrician treated either of the children for anything other than the normal checkups or the occasional earache.”

     “So, what’s your take on this, Dr. Templeton,” Stan demanded. “You’re the psychological expert and an FBI profiler, so tell us what we’re facing here.”

     “Detectives, I certainly do not have a definitive answer for you,” the quiet spoken psychiatrist admitted. “I have never met nor talked with this young woman, so I’m operating pretty much in the dark.”

     “C’mon, Doc,” Stan cajoled, “you’ve read her written words, and that was light years beyond any kind of insight that we managed to get after talking with her in person. Pretend that Jennifer Austin was lying on your couch and speaking to you personally instead of from a page in her diary. Is this woman a psychopath who is out of control? Would she kill another of her children?”

     “I know that you guys want a neat and precise profile,” the psychiatrist said with a troubled frown. “You want her to fit into a tidy little pigeon hole that labels her as either certifiably insane or completely evil and capable of a Machiavellian ruse to avoid prosecution for her homicidal act. I am saying that is not an option for me right now. I can’t make it easy for you because I will not condemn her in absentia.”

     “Well, tell us _something_ , Dr. Templeton, because right now little Noah’s life might be hanging in the balance!”

     Jeff Templeton sighed. “I have some general thoughts, gentlemen, and I’m willing to share them with you in the hopes that they may possibly help you to understand Ms. Austin. I don’t know how beneficial they will be in locating her if she wasn’t abducted and has simply fled and doesn’t want to be found.”

     “We’ll take whatever you’ve got, Doc. Just lay it on us in one syllable words so that we can get the gist of it,” Stan decreed.

     Taking another deep breath, the psychiatrist began his synopsis.

     “If we are to believe Jennifer’s account of her upbringing, it appears that she was reared in an extremely authoritarian home, especially with respect to her dominant mother. Studies have shown that authoritarian parents are rigid and intolerant because they perceive the world around them as a threat. They have a general distrust of people and feel that if people are not controlled and kept in tight reins, they will do bad things. Unfortunately, their own children also fall into this category and are perceived as a danger to their order of things. Authoritarian parents innately ‘know’ that eventually their offspring will stray off the ‘good’ path because the children are just waiting for the tiniest loophole to wreak havoc.

     The thought patterns of the authoritarian personality tend to be very narrow. They see the world in black and white with no shades of gray. Hence, their children are constantly judged and evaluated and, subsequently, perceived as either good or bad, behaving or misbehaving. It’s an either/or situation with nothing in between as a buffer.

     These parents have few diverse tools in their parenting arsenal, and they tend to stick with a pattern. There are lots of rules that are definitely not up for discussion, and give and take negotiations are certainly not encouraged. Nothing but blind obedience is tolerated. They rule through fear and punishment, and the general philosophy is ‘spare the rod and spoil the child.’ They are emotionally distant, but, paradoxically, at the same time, they are emotionally intrusive. They are like time bombs waiting to go off, and their offspring exist on tenterhooks never knowing when that may occur.

     Now let us address the child reared in such harsh and narrow circumstances. Those poor souls miss out on the important growth of inner values such as a sense of self-esteem. They find it difficult to make their own choices or to trust their own gut feelings. They are not emotionally capable of alternative ways of thinking, and are inept at developing social skills.

     As a rule, they find it challenging to show and receive love and affection, and intimacy is hard for them. On the outside, they willingly tend to obey authority. They do well in school and do not tend to engage in deviant acts of defiant behavior such as experimenting with drugs or alcohol. However, research shows that they find it difficult to handle frustration or rejection. Girls tend to give up in the face of challenges, and boys tend to react with aggressiveness. Research also shows that the majority suffer from anxiety and depression well into adulthood.

     Now let’s apply that to Jennifer’s scenario. Undoubtedly, she suffered from depression from early childhood. Her journal literally spews that out in every sentence. She felt inadequate and tried to be self-sacrificial to remedy that shortcoming. She utilized every avenue that she could to gain her father’s approval, and even eagerly took care of him when he was temporarily abandoned by his wife.

     Early adversity in the home leaves deep emotional scars, Detectives, and sometimes-irrational fears. Jennifer may have perceived the world around her as a dangerous place, just as her mother did. When a child feels unsafe, the brain secretes a toxic bath of neurochemicals and hormones that are intended to be useful in the ‘fight or flight’ response. But, being in this constant state of high alert begins to change the way in which our genes oversee the stress response, and we carry over this heightened reaction even into our adult lives. We want to safeguard ourselves at any cost. From what Jennifer wrote, it is apparent that she became protective of herself by keeping others at arm’s length. In reality, she was seeing the world through a toxic filter of defense. If she did not let people in, then they couldn’t hurt her.

     Overall, this young woman probably felt unworthy of any positive attention, and the one time that she was bold enough to let her self accept that kind of attention caused a cataclysmic upheaval with her parents. In time, she perceived herself as being punished for her rebellion. She felt betrayed by the man who was supposed to be rescuing her, and imagined that she was being forced into a role that she was unprepared to assume. She feared that she would morph into her dominant mother’s image. Ultimately, the final punishment for Jennifer’s one act of defiance was her husband’s death. Naturally, that left her with overwhelming guilt.

     The underlying theme that pervaded Jennifer’s entire life was feeling guilty for not being good enough or up to a task. We psychiatrists call it unrealistic perfectionism. What she saw around her were always examples of people doing things better, so she concluded that she had failed at everything that she tried to do. She was a terrible daughter, a terrible wife, and a terrible mother. A difficult child most assuredly would have reinforced those feelings of inadequacy. Perhaps little Cassidy had innately picked up on her mother’s insecurity, and that heightened her own behavioral issues. We’ll never know what reinforced the negative mother/child dynamic, or if there really even was one. It could have all been in Jennifer’s mind because Cassidy was the dreaded female offspring, and a frightened mother had set herself up for failure.

     Could Jennifer have had a psychotic break and beaten her daughter to death in a fit of uncontrollable rage? Gentleman, anything is possible if the pressure in the cooker reaches critical mass. Is she a cold-hearted sociopath who, with forethought, meticulously planned to remove an emotional burden from her shoulders? Again, I cannot even speculate if she was capable of being that criminally devious. Everything is pure, unsubstantiated conjecture at this point.

     Believe me when I say that I really, really want to reassure you that her little son will be safe. However, there are no etched-in-stone tenets when it comes to human behavior. From her writings, Jennifer seems to be more closely bonded with Noah, but that could change depending on outside influences or stressors. I’m sorry, guys, but that’s all I’ve got for now, although I would be glad to talk with Ms. Austin if you can locate her.”

     When Templeton saw the expressions on the other two men’s faces, he felt the need to clarify something.

     “Look, I know that you guys have the bit between your teeth now and want to charge off in a specific direction. However, what we just discussed is really just an intellectual exercise with no basis in factual proof. Don’t discount the very real scenario that Jennifer could have been abducted by a stalker and remains an innocent victim in all of this.”

     “We get that, Doc,” Stan reassured the shrink who refused to go out on a very shaky tree limb. “But I’m still haunted by those words smeared in blood on the bathroom mirror. According to your theory, ‘Bad Mother’ was exactly how Jennifer Austin most likely thought of herself, so maybe, subconsciously, she wanted the world to know that as well.


	14. Chapter 14

     Not to be deterred or sidetracked by Dr. Templeton’s warning of jumping to unfounded conclusions, Stan and Rick issued an all-points bulletin for Jennifer Austin as a person of interest in a murder case. Her picture was again broadcast across the local television networks as well as a description of her car and the license plate number. The two detectives also optimistically added that this suspect might have a one-year-old male child with her.

     Regardless of this new about-face in the abduction scenario, donations continued to trickle into the “Go Fund Me” account, and well-meaning neighbors continued to pilot their lawnmowers over the grass at the abandoned house on Emberton Court. Much to Stan and Rick’s discomfort, inquiring but confused phone calls still came from Tom Austin’s relatives. Now the grieving family didn’t know what to think. To be honest, neither did Stan or Rick.

**********

     Exactly twenty-seven days later, there was an unexpected twist in the case. The investigating detectives received a call from the Delaware State Police informing them that Jennifer and Noah Austin had been found.  A newly minted and zealous state trooper, who prided himself on memorizing all APBs and memorandums issued to police agencies along the East Coast, had spotted Jennifer Austin’s silver Subaru parked outside a food market on Route 1 in Dewey Beach, Delaware. He watched from his unmarked car until she came out of the mart with a baby in one arm and a sack of groceries in her other hand. Except for the child, she appeared to be alone.

     The young state trooper wisely did not approach her at that time. Instead, he radioed in to his barracks and told his fellow officers that he would be following her back to wherever she was staying. Later, the observant and careful officer would be joined by an armed team outside of a small beach house cottage just steps from the Atlantic Ocean. When the team breached the front door, Jennifer looked up in terror, but little Noah, seated on the floor among his plastic blocks, greeted the intruders with a big smile.

     Noah was now in the care of a representative from Pennsylvania’s Child Welfare Department, and Jennifer was seated in an interrogation room in the precinct house across from Stan and Rick. Dr. Jeff Templeton was just outside the room peering through the one-way glass listening in on the discussion.

     “Mrs. Austin,” Stan began quietly, “why did you flee the state?”

     Jennifer looked confused. “What are you talking about, Detective Kostas? I did not flee. I simply decided to leave town for a bit to find some peace. I just don’t understand why I’m here or why my child was taken from me. Maybe it is you who owe me some kind of explanation.”

     Stan chose to answer in the same patient, non-threatening tone. “Surely, Jennifer, you have to admit that the scene that we found in your house had us alarmed that something might have happened to you.”

     “Why were you in my house?” the woman asked in an astounded voice.

     “We entered your home after your mother-in-law paid a visit when she couldn’t reach you by phone. She was fearful that something had happened to you, and it sure looked pretty ominous when we saw how the place was left,” Stan said firmly. “Did you do that?”

     “You had no right to invade my privacy and neither did my mother-in-law!” Jennifer said adamantly.

     Stan was determined to keep the discussion on track. “Regardless of right or wrong, as I said, your mother-in-law was worried and quite distraught. If you intended to take a trip, why didn’t you let her know and spare her that anguish? Why didn’t you let us know that you were leaving the state?”

     “I wasn’t aware that I had to inform the police of every step that I take,” the woman began her answer. “I am truly sorry about the misunderstanding and regret all the effort that you put into finding me. But, it’s really not my fault if I didn’t know. And, as for my mother-in-law, well, I’m surprised that she decided to be so concerned all of a sudden. It’s not as if she ever called me before all this happened with Cassidy, and recently, even those calls have dwindled. Although she has never said it to my face, I really think that she considers me responsible for being a less than attentive mother to my child. I just know that she blames me for Cassidy’s death. We were never really close before, and this tragedy has widened the gap between us.”

     Stan sat back in his chair and studied the woman thoughtfully. He nodded to Rick, a silent signal that it was his partner’s turn to try to unravel this knot.

     “Mrs. Austin,” Rick began, “please help me understand how you came to leave your house in such a shambles, as well as leaving behind your phone on the kitchen counter. You have to admit, things looked pretty chaotic and suspicious. We thought that you and Noah might have been abducted and in danger, maybe even the victims of some sort of foul play.”

     Jennifer took a deep breath and seemed to wilt in her straight-backed chair.

     “As you are aware, Detective, I have been under non-stop emotional strain since this all began. People seemed to be coming at me from all sides, pointing fingers, blaming, condemning. You read all those ugly letters and the less than factual headlines in the newspapers. It seemed to go on and on so that I couldn’t eat and I couldn’t sleep. Things just kept playing over and over on a loop in my mind, and I felt so alone. In the dead of night, if I had screamed and screamed, who would have heard me except for Noah, a tiny baby who was powerless to make anything right in our little world? Not that anything can ever be fixed again. Tom is gone. Cassidy is gone. Our family is fractured into pieces. At times, I had contemplated ending my life as well, but I just could never do that to my little boy.”

     “Tell me about the day that you left, Jennifer,” Rick encouraged. “Did everything come to a head then?”

     Both detectives noted that Jennifer certainly looked forlorn and defeated as she responded.

     “I took Noah food shopping with me that afternoon which wasn’t exactly the wisest thing to do because it was raining so hard it seemed to be coming down in sheets. When we got home, I sat him on the floor in the living room so that I could bring in the bags from the garage. It was then that I noticed that the rain had flooded in through the windows and there was a huge puddle on the floor. That water sat there mocking me, like a talisman of my broken world that I didn’t have the resources to fix. I intended to mop the mess up later, but as I was unpacking the groceries, a jar of spaghetti sauce slipped out of my hand and shattered on the kitchen floor.

     Noah heard the noise and came crawling around the corner as I was trying to pick up the glass. I was distracted for a moment, and that’s how I came to cut my hand on a pointy shard. It started bleeding pretty badly, so I grabbed Noah and took him into the bathroom with me while I ran water over the gash, but I just completely lost my composure at that point. I felt so alone and overwhelmed. I think Noah became afraid because I was crying, so he started crying, too. So, there we were—two very unhappy, miserable people weeping and weeping. I shouldn’t have made my baby cry. Mothers are not supposed to do that. They are supposed to comfort their children, not upset them. It was at that moment that I realized the truth, and I etched those words in my own blood on the mirror. I truly was a ‘Bad Mother.’

     Well, eventually everybody runs out of tears. When I got myself under control and Noah comforted, I just knew that I had to get out of that house. I had to get away from all the loneliness and the heartache within those walls. I didn’t even want to be attached to my life by my phone. So, I just left everything behind, got us both into the car, and started to drive and drive in search of some peace.”

     Rick looked unconvinced of this woman’s story.

    “Mrs. Austin, you were missing in action for almost a month. Surely, at some point, you must have been aware that we were looking for you. It was all over the news after you left. Why didn’t you let anyone know that you were okay? Even though you had left your cell behind, you could have purchased a go-phone to make that call.”

     Jennifer finally looked up at her interrogator.

     “The basic utilities like electricity and heat were working in the beach house, but the cable wasn’t turned on so I wasn’t able to watch television, and I never bought a newspaper,” she explained. “I had no idea that anyone cared enough to look for me. And I didn’t want another phone because there was nobody that I wanted to talk to.”

     Rick was persistent. “Well, just how did you manage to gain access to that beach house? The Delaware State Police have contacted the owners and they didn’t have a clue that you were squatting there.”

     “I had a key,” the woman said quite innocently. “That house belongs to the parents of my friend from nursing school—Chloe Petersen. After we graduated, she joined the medical team of ‘Doctors Without Borders’ and flew to Christchurch, New Zealand after it suffered a catastrophic earthquake. She fell in love with the country and eventually emigrated. When she heard about Cassidy’s murder from her mom and dad, she immediately called to offer her condolences. She also said that she was sending me the key to her parents’ place on the Delaware shore if I ever felt the need to get away for a while. I suppose that she never told her parent that she had done so.”

     Now it was Stan’s turn in the interrogation.

     “Jennifer, we know that you have very little financial resources left from your husband’s life insurance payout. Initially, over half of that money went towards his funeral, and then there was the expense of Cassidy’s interment. You have almost nothing remaining, and have been existing on a shoestring budget ever since. Yet you withdrew almost all of your existing funds from your savings account before you left town. It certainly wasn’t much, so how did you manage to keep yourself in groceries and Noah in diapers for a month? How did you pay for gas for your car?”

     Now the detectives noticed the first spark of defiance in Jennifer’s demeanor.

     “I had money, Detectives. I didn’t have to resort to shoplifting, if that’s what you’re asking!”

     When Stan just raised his eyebrows, it had the desired effect of keeping the woman talking.

     “As you are well aware, I received lots of hate mail after Cassidy’s death which I dutifully turned over to you. However, I also received lots of supportive letters and many contained cash. Some people sent me five, ten, or twenty dollars here and there. One generous person actually included a hundred dollar bill with her note. Over time, there was almost two thousand dollars, and that is what I used to ‘keep myself in groceries and Noah in diapers,’ if you must know. People gave me that money and it had no strings attached, so I could decide how and when to use it. Perhaps I didn’t use good judgment when I left the way that I did, but I haven’t broken any laws. Now, I think that I have answered all of your questions and I want my son back. You had no right to take him from me, and he’s probably upset. I want to leave now.”

     Stan used his quiet tone to try to pacify the woman for a while longer. Even though she didn’t know it yet, there was much more intrusive probing in her future.

     “I’ll have someone notify Children’s Services in a few minutes, but let’s talk for a bit longer. Most of what you have told me is excruciatingly sad. Your life has been such a tragedy, Jennifer, and my heart goes out to you. In truth, I really cannot imagine what you went through then or even what you are experiencing now. It’s obvious that you feel alone with no one to talk to about your true feelings. So, tell me now. I’ll listen and try to understand, I promise.”

     Jennifer just looked at the detective with soulful eyes, but said nothing, so Stan took the opportunity to ease into something that they could use. With a sad smile, he began to try to win her trust and get her talking.

     “Jennifer, I now realize that you were under incredible stress for so long and that probably started when you were a kid and lived in your parents’ home. Rick and I have met your mother, so we know that your childhood could not have been easy. She is a hard person, so she probably made your life hard as well. She never appreciated how you tried to be good, and ultimately turned her back on you after your marriage. You would have thought that the advent of a first grandchild would have softened her heart. Everyone loves innocent little babies, right—especially ones who will eventually call you Mum-Mum or Nanna? But, your mother isn’t exactly your normal version of a doting grandparent, is she, Jennifer? She never wanted to see little Cassidy, or even little Noah when he came along next.

     “No, she didn’t,” Jennifer answered in a small voice.

     “Well, it had to have been stressful being a full-time mother to such young kids so close in age,” Stan commiserated. “You were on call 24/7 as a mom, unlike when you were working as a nurse in a hospital. Did you miss working at your vocation? Did you miss getting to talk with intelligent adult people in the workplace? My partner can be a pain sometimes, but I would miss Rick if I didn’t get to see him at the precinct house on pretty much a daily basis.

     And, since your husband was working so many hours, you probably didn’t get to see much of him either. So, essentially, you were stuck in a money-pit of a house that sapped your finances, with two little kids who sapped your strength each day as well. You and Tom didn’t have any extra cash for the occasional date night, so it was the same dreary routine for you, day after day.

     Then, suddenly, even Tom leaves you, and you are truly alone. You feel guilty that he was working so hard, and maybe even a bit angry that he never had a chance to make things better for you and the kids. Now everything is all on your fragile shoulders, and it’s just not fair. I get that, Jennifer, I really do. Don’t be ashamed of being angry because anger is one of the steps that you have to go through when you are grieving. It’s a normal response, just like denial and bargaining. You’re a nurse, so surely you must know that all those progressive stages of grief are normal if we want to eventually heal.”

     “I miss him,” was all that Jennifer was willing to admit.

     “But,” Stan urged, “you haven’t really reached the healing part, have you?”

     “Maybe not,” the young woman answered.

     “I think that’s because that heavy burden was like a mountain that you couldn’t climb. Maybe you could have managed it by yourself, but certainly not with two kids in your arms. Even though you were needy, their needs seemed to trump yours. You tried to keep it all together for their sakes, but that is a hard thing to do, especially if you have a difficult child to contend with day in and day out. Tell me about Cassidy, Jennifer. You can be honest because we are not here to judge you. It’s abundantly clear that you were a good mother. Anybody can get that concept just by looking at little Noah and seeing how happy he is.”

     For a while, it didn’t seem as if Jennifer was going to respond, but, finally, after taking a shuddering breath, she began to speak quietly as she gazed at an empty spot in the room.

     “Yes, Noah has always been an easy, happy baby, but Cassidy—well, not so much. She was challenging from the time that she was born, and I’ve always wondered which of us was the real problem. I’m a trained nurse, so I should know the right way to take care of a baby. And I do, but it seemed that wasn’t enough for my daughter. She cried a lot and was never pleasant or easy to be around. I could never figure out why. Tom used to say that she would eventually outgrow her tantrums, but what did he know? He had been a parent for the same amount of time that I had, so he certainly was not an expert.

     You told me that you would not be judgmental, Detective, but I think that Cassidy was exactly that. Sometimes, she reminded me of my own mother. I could never please her either. Now, that’s really a sad state of affairs when a mother is intimidated by her own two-year-old.”

     “Did that make you angry, Jennifer?” Stan persisted.

     “It made me depressed, Detective.”

     Stan raised his eyebrows. “Someone once told me that the definition of depression is ‘anger turned inward.’ So, maybe you were not even aware that your anger was eating away at you from the inside. But, you had to be angry with yourself for not liking your daughter, and it would be logical that you would be angry with your child for making you feel that way. It’s okay to admit that you were angry with Cassidy, Jennifer. It’s even okay to admit that perhaps you sometimes even hated her.”

     “Stop saying ‘angry,’ Detective. It’s a harsh word for my being distraught at times. ‘Hate’ is an ugly word, as well. I never hated my daughter,” Jennifer insisted.

     Stan looked steadily at the woman before him. “But you did write that in your journal, Jennifer.”

     The young woman gazed at the detective uncomprehendingly.

     “We found your personal journal, Jennifer,” Stan informed her. “The very last entry—actually the very last line—says that you had come to the conclusion that you hated your daughter.”

     “No, no no!!” the now aghast woman whispered in disbelief. “You had no right to read my private thoughts. Nobody was ever supposed to read them. That journal was my own kind of therapy and was privileged information. How dare you invade my privacy!”

     Rick fielded this accusation. “We had every right, Mrs. Austin, because we were led to believe that you and your son were in danger. And if that isn’t reason enough for you, we had also obtained a legal warrant.”

     Jennifer was now glaring at both of the men on the other side of the table.

     “You’re taking things out of context, Detectives, and trying to make me into some kind of monster because you can’t find the actual monster who was responsible for murdering Cassidy!”

     Now Stan held up placating hands.

     “Jennifer, I can understand how you feel violated. I get that, but it did have us wondering about what really went on the night that Cassidy was killed. As for me, personally, I keep picturing some poor young woman pushed way beyond her limits. When that happens and the rage boils up, sometimes we suddenly become somebody else that we don’t recognize. We may do or say things that we cannot remember clearly. Some people have told me it’s as if they step outside of their bodies for a moment to stand back like an observer and watch a scene unfold. They see a vision of themselves doing something that they would never do if they were in complete control. Can you tell me if that is what happened to you the night that Cassidy died?”

     The young woman stared at him with wide eyes.

     “That’s a vile thing to say! I did _not_ have some kind of psychotic break, Detectives, and I cannot believe that you think that I would kill my own daughter!”

     “Would you be willing to talk with our department psychiatrist, Jennifer, to convince him of that? We can have him here in a matter of minutes if you’re agreeable.”

     Now the young woman was irate.

     “I am not willing or agreeable to anything! I have done nothing wrong and am a victim, not some fiend. Do not try to make me out to be one because you can’t find the actual murderer. Now, I want my child returned to me and I want to leave. If you are unwilling to release me, then I want a lawyer by my side before I say another word!”

**********

     After Stan and Rick had left the interrogation room, they invited Dr. Templeton into their small cubicle for his take on the situation.

     “Well, Doc, what do you think?”

     Jeff Templeton was thoughtful as he answered.

     “Mrs. Austin’s behavioral affect was certainly appropriate throughout the interview. She was candid and well-spoken, and she seemed credible, even if she was still trying to gain sympathy by playing the victim card. And, her outrage at the end was real because she felt betrayed. She displayed justifiable antipathy towards you because of that betrayal.

     Now, was this all an act? Again, I really cannot say without further, intense interaction with her and running some psychological tests. But, I don’t think that you are going to break this woman down today so that she is hysterically confessing to murdering her daughter.

     Years of research has shown that it is rare for people suspected of killing to actually say those words outright. They won’t overtly lie, but use outrage or word manipulation as a means of deflection such as she did when she said—‘I can’t believe that you think I killed my own daughter.’ In essence, she _has_ said the words ‘I killed my own daughter,’ but they were delivered in a context that precludes her from being accused of _confessing_.

     It is also possible that she had stopped thinking of Cassidy as her ‘own daughter.’ She could be rationalizing that she was killing someone who was no longer a part of her. Maybe, subconsciously, she was killing a representation of her own mother.”

     Stan just shook his head in frustration.

      “Do you think that she is a danger to the little boy? Maybe that jar of spaghetti sauce in her kitchen was not accidently dropped. Maybe seeing the watery mess in her living room was the last straw and she threw that jar in a fit of angry rage? She managed to rein it in that time, but she also needed to remove herself from her environment to keep it all tamped down.”

     The psychiatrist understood the detectives worry.

     “She’s been alone with her son for the last month and he’s fine, so I do not believe that he is in imminent danger. However, if she is forced to return to her house, that may again trigger those feelings of desolation and frustration.”

     “Great, just great!” Rick moaned. “We really can’t hold her on anything or charge her with a crime because we have no concrete evidence. And, she won’t talk to us anymore without a lawyer, so we’re screwed and have to let her go. I’ve got to tell you that I’m really not comfortable with that scenario.”

     The psychiatrist made a wry face followed by a half-hearted little smile. “If it makes you feel any better Detectives, maybe the woman really is as innocent as she claims.”


	15. Chapter 15

     Jennifer Austin was reluctantly released from custody and driven home to the house on Emberton Court. Her police escort informed her that her car would be returned later in the day, as would little Noah. When Jennifer let herself enter the kitchen, she sighed as she gazed at the long-dried mess on the floor. It certainly no longer resembled spaghetti sauce. It was a dark, irregular and desiccated stain that seemed to have ugly tentacles stretching out in all directions. She retrieved a bucket of hot water, added a copious amount of strong pine cleaner and, on her hands and knees, started to scrub with a vengeance. The dedicated elbow grease managed to remove most of the substance, but the white grout between the tiles still mocked her by retaining an orange hue that she could not remove even with bleach and an old toothbrush. She thought about putting a small scatter rug over the area, but then decided against doing that. Perhaps, she needed a daily reminder of how impulsive stupid actions could morph into harbingers of suspicion and condemnation.

     She then resignedly mopped up the standing water in the living room, noting that the hardwood was now beyond salvation. She couldn’t bring herself to descend the basement steps to observe what had to be a flourishing jungle of more mold and mildew eating away at the home’s foundation. The despondent young woman couldn’t imagine a more fitting metaphor of her own destiny. Life was slowly eroding away the underpinnings of her being.

     Jennifer found that her anguished confession on the bathroom mirror was easier to eradicate, and again, she chastised herself for exposing her raw, uncensored angst to anyone who had walked through her house that fateful day. She wondered if this was how rape victims felt—violated and naked in front of people who were determined to hurt them. She suddenly craved a long, hot shower to wash away that feeling, but when she went to retrieve fresh underwear from her dresser drawer, she noticed that her panties and bras were no longer in neat little piles. Some intrusive stranger had handled them, and that was another invasion into her personal space that made her slightly sick to her stomach.

     Later, once more back in the kitchen, Jennifer made herself a cup of herbal tea to soothe her frazzled nerves. She noted the stack of mail tucked away in a corner of the counter, and when she picked it up she saw that each and every envelope had been neatly slit open. She became incensed once again over the ultimate invasion of privacy by the police who had been hunting her.

     Sitting beside the mail was her abandoned cell phone, now mocking her with its silence. Of course, the battery had run down and it needed to be charged, but she intentionally made no move to plug it into an electrical outlet. That was because Jennifer had been thinking about her present dilemma as she sat inhaling the aroma of lavender and chamomile. She had firmly decided to finally take control of her life. Everybody had been pulling and pushing her in different directions these last months, admonishing, ordering, demanding, poking and prodding. She was fed up with listening to the litany of “you should haves.” All of that had to stop or she really would lose her mind. She needed to be in the driver’s seat from now on, for herself and for Noah.

     So, first thing tomorrow morning, she would begin her new, more proactive life by purchasing a cheap go-phone at Walmart with a different number. She would feel secure with a lifeline for emergencies, but she would give no one else that information. She was through with being at the beck and call of the police, and she was done with her judgmental in-laws and their meddlesome ways. Jennifer had shut the door on her parents years ago, and she would do the same with Tom’s family. She and Noah would go it alone, and, somehow, Jennifer knew that they would be better off cutting all ties.

     When a grim-faced social worker later knocked on the door with Noah in her arms, it was hard to tell if mother or child was more overjoyed with the reunion. That night, the little boy slept in his mother’s bed just as he had done for the last month, cocooned in her protective and loving embrace. They had each other, and that had to be enough to get them through the darkness of the days ahead.

     The next morning, Jennifer almost decided to ignore the persistent knocking when she saw the two detectives—Stan Kostas and Rick Schrader—through the glass side panels beside the front door. Then, her more logical side told her that was definitely not wise. At this point in their investigation, most likely both cops had their own key to Jennifer’s home and would simply let themselves in if she failed to respond.

     Jennifer cracked open the door enough to carry on a conversation, but not wide enough to be interpreted as an invitation to enter.

     “Good morning, Detectives,” she said sweetly. “Have you decided to visit because you have more questions for me, or perhaps more accusations?”

     Rick was scowling, but Stan put on his game face and answered, “Actually, Mrs. Austin, we stopped by to return something that is yours.”

     Jennifer found her journal being held out like a peace offering. She was now sufficiently jaded to know that it was anything but an attempt at making “peace.” The journal was private property that had been removed from her home without her permission. The police department simply was covering their ass, but, she had no doubt that a copy now existed somewhere in their archives.

     “Anything else?” Jennifer demanded.

     “We were wondering how Noah is this morning?” Stan asked politely.

     “He’s just fine. Thank you for your concern,” she answered.

     “Jennifer,” Stan began once more, “you have my card. If you decide to change your mind about talking with our psychiatrist, please let me know. Maybe you need someone to help you sort things out.”

     “What I need is for you to leave me alone unless you are coming to tell me that you have found my daughter’s murderer,” the young mother answered coldly as she began to shut the door in their faces.

     Jennifer held her breath with her back pushed firmly against the wooden panel that separated a frightened woman from the people who had suddenly become the enemy. Eventually, she heard a car motor turn over and the sound of an engine retreating down the street. Only then did she inspect the journal and begin to gently fan the pages. She didn’t notice any dog-eared sheets or notations in the margins, but it still seemed tainted, and she considered dousing it with gasoline and igniting it in the back yard. But Jennifer really couldn’t take that drastic action. That book, and the words and thoughts within the covers, were really her soul laid bare. It explained the who and the why of her. If she destroyed it, she would, in essence, be giving up and destroying herself, and that definitely was not an option. This new version of a stronger Jennifer was determined to survive!

~~~~~~~~~~

    Jennifer’s Subaru had been left in the driveway yesterday, just as promised, and a patrolman had handed her the keys. So, this morning, after she fed Noah his breakfast, mother and son headed off to the city of York, Pennsylvania. Jennifer had looked up the address of the county’s Legal Aid Office, which happened to be located about a half-hour’s drive away in the heart of downtown. The small agency was crowded when she arrived, so she dutifully took a number and claimed a seat. Noah, however, was full of energy. Just a little over a year old, he had recently decided to forego crawling in favor of trying out ambulation on two legs instead. He loved to cruise his surroundings by holding onto chairs or end tables as he went. And that was what he was doing right now. Other waiting clients smiled at the determined child who would grin whenever he had a mishap and landed on his bottom. Finally, after an hour, he had tired himself out and snuggled in his mother’s arms.

     An hour after that, Jennifer’s name was finally called and she was directed to a tiny cubicle to meet a lawyer. The nameplate on the messy desk that took up most of the area told any visitors that this little space belonged to Matthew Stewart. Jennifer shook hands with the casually dressed man before her while balancing a sleeping toddler in her other arm. She supposed that she was surprised at how young the attorney looked, but then he probably had just graduated from law school, she reasoned. Maybe this was a way of getting some experience under his belt before trying to find an established partnership that would take him into their practice.

     Jennifer only had to give her name before a response was forthcoming. The young man’s eyes had widened in recognition. Maybe initially he didn’t know my face, Jennifer thought to herself, but he certainly is familiar with my reputation. I’ve become a household name, and not in a good way, she sadly concluded. Nevertheless, she lifted her chin defiantly and told her story to someone who was supposed to be her advocate. She left nothing out, expounding on every detail from the very first minute of Cassidy’s disappearance, and ending with the grueling session that she had endured yesterday at police headquarters.

     Retaining her dignity as best as she could, she informed the Legal Aid representative that she did not have the means to pay him for any services that he might render on her behalf.

     “I’m already three months behind on my mortgage as well as all of my utilities. It’s probably a coin toss whether the bank will evict me first, or the gas and electric companies decide to turn off the taps.”

     “What are you living on at present?” the lawyer asked quietly. “Is someone helping you financially?”

     “Believe me, Counselor, there is nobody in my corner. I am quite alone and living on sheer willpower right now,” Jennifer answered candidly without the least bit of sarcasm or artifice. “However, my one huge fear is that the county may take away my son because I cannot provide for him. Actually, maybe that is my second worst fear. My primary worry is that I will lose him because the police will arrest me and send me to jail for something that I did not do.”

     “Hopefully, it will not come to that, Mrs. Austin,” the lawyer responded. “From what you have told me, the police have found themselves stymied finding the real murderer, and they are now grasping at straws. If you wish to retain my services, I promise that I will unearth every scrap of evidence that they have against you and put it to the litmus test for veracity. If they actually do bring charges, I will represent you in court. At the present time, I can at least get them to stop harassing you, if nothing else.”

     Jennifer wondered if this young legal eagle really had the expertise to defend her if she were arrested on murder charges, but what other recourse did she have? She found herself nodding and signing documents that made Matthew Stewart her attorney of record.

     Before she left his small office, the young man asked once again.

     “Are you sure that there is not a family member who could help you stay afloat, Mrs. Austin?”

     “Mr. Stewart, my family is all but dead to me and have been since my marriage. If you look at my son, I’m sure that you can venture a guess as to why that is. And, as for my husband’s relatives—well, they probably consider me guilty of killing my other child, so I want to have nothing more to do with that bunch. I need to save myself now. I have been weak and dependent in the past, always hoping somebody would come to my aid and rescue me. That didn’t work out so well for me because real life is definitely not a Cinderella story, and there’s no Prince Charming on my horizon. It’s time that I stood on my own two feet. I am an educated woman—a registered nurse, so I intend to pursue getting hired once again. I may not be able to make enough to get out of the huge hole that I find myself in, but I won’t allow my baby to starve.”

     Matthew Stewart was impressed with his client’s spunk, and had a few words of advice. He wrote something on a piece of paper and handed it to her across his desk.

     “This first address, just down Market Street, is the office for the WIC Program. I’d advise you to stop in and fill out the paperwork to get vouchers for formula and nutritional staples for your little boy. He will be covered up to the age of 5 years-old.

     The second bit of information is the web address for the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare. You can fill out the information on-line for that as well as the SNAP Program which is an acronym for ‘Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program.’ Do this as soon as possible because the processing takes time.”

     “So, you think that I should go on welfare and apply for food stamps,” Jennifer said forlornly.

     “Perhaps until you can get a job,” the attorney advised. “Welfare payments depend on a recipient actively seeking employment, and they do check that, even if it’s only a sporadic effort. There is also another upside to having a verifiable income. Then maybe you can re-negotiate the terms of your mortgage and keep a roof over your head.”

     “Believe me,” Jennifer answered quietly, “that is one roof that I would not want to keep hovering above me. It’s a source of sorrow and heartache. Sometimes I feel as if the walls are closing in trying to suffocate me.”

     “Perhaps I can understand that, Mrs. Austin, considering what happened to your daughter. We will most likely be seeing a lot of each other in the near future, and we can discuss ‘down the road’ options at a later date. Right now, I’ll do my job of representing you, and your responsibility is to begin putting the short-term stopgap measures in place to physically sustain you and your son.”

~~~~~~~~~~

       Matthew Stewart saw several more petitioners that day and added them to his list of clients. Some of their problems were easy fixes—temporary restraining orders against abusive spouses, disputes with landlords, misdemeanor drug possession charges. But none were as notorious or compelling as Jennifer Austin’s case. He found himself intrigued by this determined young woman with her open face devoid of any makeup, and her captivating green eyes that had unashamedly held his gaze. She had been brutally forthright, offering no excuse for her recent foray off the grid. He actually admired her rather than pitied her, and was astute enough to realize that sympathy was the last thing that she wanted or needed right now. However, even if everything was as she claimed it to be, then she still definitely needed his help. He would visit the police precinct tomorrow and demand to see their “evidence” against his client. It couldn’t have been anything concrete because then they would have arrested her outright. Yes—this was definitely a case that he wanted to sink his teeth into, if only to stop this young widow and mother from being bullied.

~~~~~~~~~~

     Jennifer became proactive as well, making the WIC Office her next stop after leaving the Legal Aid Center. A compassionate woman smiled at a now awake and beguiling Noah, and took all the necessary information. She promised that everything would be expedited, with the official vouchers arriving soon by mail.

     The next stop was a chain grocery store. Jen dug into her dwindling stash of cash to buy the essentials and then pumped some gasoline into the car.

     Glancing at her son nestled in his car seat, she murmured softly, “I may have to live on Ramen Noodles for awhile, Sweetie, but I promise that you’ll be well fed.”

     That night, she went online and maxed out her one and only credit card to sign up for the required Continuing Education Credits necessary to re-activate her nursing license. Then she applied for welfare and food stamps. “Baby steps,” she told herself, “baby steps in the right direction!”

     The next afternoon, Jennifer’s cell phone rang with the screen showing her new attorney’s name and number. He was one of the few people that had a lifeline to her in her new incarnation as an independent woman.

     “I stopped by the police precinct this morning before I came into work,” he began. “I talked with both of the lead detectives on your case, and I’d like to bring you up to speed. Can you stop in the office today? I don’t like to discuss a client’s privileged information over the phone.”

     Jennifer sighed. “Noah is down for his nap right now, and a drive into the city and paying to park will just keep chipping away at what little money that I have left. I really don’t mind if you tell me stuff over the phone.”

     Matt Stewart was still hesitant. “How about I stop by your house after I’m finished at the Legal Aid Center? Then we can talk in person.”

     This was the very first time that the young attorney offered to leave the professional confines of the office to meet a client. The only previous incidences which had occurred outside of that realm were when he liaisoned with someone that he represented at the courthouse during their trial or to present their case. But, this was the big time, he justified his action—an actual murder case that required him to go the extra mile. He was happy when Jennifer Austin agreed to let him come to her home later in the day.

     When he arrived at the small house at the end of a court, Jennifer opened the door in old jeans and a sweatshirt. Even under the bulky clothes, Matt noticed how thin and frail she looked. As before, her shiny dark brown hair was pulled back in a casual ponytail, and she was fresh-faced, without any makeup to enhance her appearance. She really doesn’t need any of that, the young man decided. She has a natural beauty that doesn’t depend on mascara or blusher. If this ever went to trial, surely a jury would perceive her as pure, fragile, and vulnerable, as well as innocent of the horrible charges that the police were so ardently trying to bring against her.

     Jen led her visitor into the small kitchen after they both had to straddle a baby gate that separated that space from the rest of the house. Noah was on the tile floor playing with some plastic cups and bowls and a wooden spoon. The little guy gave the new visitor a curious but disinterested look before going back to banging on the plastic containers with his spoon.

     Jen smiled at his antics. “Maybe one day he’ll become some famous drummer in a rock band. Hopefully, success won’t go to his head and make him forget his old mother on his way to the top. Oh, and I’m sorry about the calisthenics to get into the kitchen. I need a barrier to keep Noah out of the living room because I worry about possible mold from leaking windows. ”

     The young mother offered Matt a choice of tea or orange juice, both of which he declined. He was anxious to share his findings with her, even though there wasn’t much substance to them at the present time.

     “Mrs. Austin,” he began earnestly, but his client immediately held up her hand.

     “Mr. Stewart, if we are going to be joined at the hip throughout this ordeal, let’s not be so formal. Just call me Jennifer or Jen because that will make it seem as if you are more on my side.”

     “Well, okay then,” the attorney agreed. “I just didn’t want you to perceive me as being condescending.”

     The young woman smirked. “It’s those detectives who put my teeth on edge and seem condescending when they call me Jennifer. It makes me feel as if they are school teachers who are about to scold me for misbehaving in class.”

     The lawyer smiled. “I’ll call you Jen if you agree to call me Matt,” he decreed. “Deal?”

     “Deal!” she concurred.

     “So, Jen,” Matt began, “the police have no new suspects since they have decided to concentrate on you. They claim that their interest was piqued when they discovered a journal of some kind hidden in your bedroom. They also claimed that there was an entry in that journal that made them believe that you hated your own daughter and ultimately took her life. You later tried to cover your crime by running away.”

     Jen sighed and looked her attorney in the eye. “The detectives returned that ‘damning’ evidence to me a few days ago, but I’m sure that they made a copy. Did they let you read it?”

     “No, they didn’t,” Matt answered and awaited his client’s response.

     After a heartbeat, Jen again sighed in frustration. “I suppose that you’ll want to read it now.”

     Matt was careful with his answer. “If the police do not intend to use whatever is in that journal as a motive for your daughter’s murder, then it wouldn’t be necessary for me to read it. However, if you are indicted at some point, then I would have to be privy to the contents.”

     “Maybe someday I’ll trust you enough to share it, but, please, not yet if it’s not absolutely necessary,” Jennifer pleaded.

     “As long as you understand what my motivation would be for invading your privacy,” the young attorney said softly, perhaps stung by her lack of faith in him.

     Maybe Jennifer was having an attack of conscience because a heartbeat later, she tried to explain.

     “That journal was just a sort of diary that I had been keeping the last few years after I became a widow. It contained my private thoughts that were not meant for anyone else’s eyes. I started it after my husband died, and it was cathartic to get those words down on paper. It certainly was not ‘hidden,’ Matt. I simply stored it away after Cassidy’s murder. I was too numb at that moment in time to have written another coherent line, even if my life depended on it.”

     “I presume that some of those written words were construed by the police as a motive for Cassidy’s death?” Matt asked.

     Jennifer looked very sad. “I’ve reread some of the last parts of my journal and now see it for what it is—the saga of a young, inexperienced mother suffering the baby blues and writing down very unhappy but private thoughts. After my husband was killed, I added pathetic entries during my period of grief and mourning when I was feeling so very alone. Of course, like any mother trying to raise a young family all on my own, there were entries that depicted how overwhelmed I felt at any given time.

     As day after lonely day passed, I saw myself as a failure because I was very self-critical and didn’t think that I was a good mother to Cassidy and Noah. Noah was still an infant, but Cassidy was older, more observant, and definitely more demanding. Like me, she seemed to be lost without her father and always terribly unhappy. I probably just felt defeated when I postulated that Cassidy hated me for my ineptitude, and I made the monumental mistake of saying that perhaps, at times, I hated her, too, for judging me. But that imprudent sentiment didn’t have some nefarious import. It was just the foolish ramblings of an insecure and self-doubting parent. I think that what I was really saying was that I hated myself for making Cassidy perceive me in that way. Matt, I swear to you, I would never harm my own flesh and blood to punish her for my own shortcomings.”

     Matt had familiarized himself with his client’s entire history, and could not imagine how she had managed to get through each day and not fly apart into a million pieces.

     “Jen, Detective Kostas suggested that you may benefit from seeing a counselor. Maybe that’s not such a bad idea since the amount of stress that you are under is monumental. However, we would get you in to see our _own_ psychologist, and doctor/patient privilege would prevent him from sharing anything that you may say to him.”

     Jennifer smiled. “I appreciate your concern, Matt, but I don’t believe that’s necessary. I think that my present circumstances of being under suspicion have made me angry enough to be proactive. I will not continue to see myself as a helpless victim, and I do not intend to let myself be bullied anymore by relatives or even the police. I know that I haven’t done anything wrong, and it’s on them to prove that I did!”


	16. Chapter 16

     With a new, determined resolve, Jennifer initiated changes. She visited the local animal rescue shelter and adopted a Boxer-Rottweiler-mix older puppy who seemed sweet-tempered and docile despite the ominous canine genes in his lineage. This daunting creature would now be her security alarm as well as protection if there was another attempted home invasion. She very carefully introduced the dog to Noah, and the two immediately bonded like soulmates. “Joe” was very tolerant of Noah’s clumsy manhandling, and accepted his role of playmate as well as faithful guardian with patient poise. The big dog now shared Jennifer’s bed each night as did Noah, and the arrangement made a frightened young woman feel safer.

     Eventually, Jennifer finished accumulating all of the continuing education credits to renew her nursing license and begin her hunt for a job. In the meantime, she had gotten approved for a small monthly welfare check and food stamps, but it certainly didn’t go very far each month. So, she went on interview after interview, both in Baltimore and Pennsylvania, in search of an eight-hour day shift position. That was hard to find in hospitals where 12-hour tours were now the norm, and the daylight shifts were most sought after by nurses. Thus, any available vacancies were few and far between.

     Disheartened and frustrated, she finally accepted an offer from a nearby nursing home in Pennsylvania for an 8-hour day job. The pay was abysmal, but at least she had gotten her foot in the door for a return to her career. She then posted a small index card on the bulletin board of the local grocery store advertising for a babysitter. Jennifer quickly but thoroughly vetted an older, retired widow who seemed enchanted by Noah and who agreed to charge a low hourly rate. Jen’s daily grind began anew and she was usually exhausted by the end of each night.

     Of course, her take home pay was still not enough to meet her monthly mortgage which now included penalties as well as additional interest, and letters from the lending institution came in her mailbox weekly with threats of foreclosure and eviction. Jennifer didn’t want to bother her lawyer with what she saw as her own responsibility. But, the young attorney had kept in touch. Just recently, he had helped Jennifer when her in-laws petitioned the court for partial physical custody of Noah, meaning that they could take him out for short day trips and visits to their homes. Matt had fought and won that battle before a judge, and Noah had no further contact with Tom’s family. However, the attentive young man had also become aware of his client’s financial troubles and offered some advice.

     “Jen, you don’t have enough equity in your home to use as leverage. You are in a very deep hole with insufficient resources to get yourself out. You would definitely be unsuccessful if you tried to put your home on the market with all of its structural issues, not to mention a lien against it by the bank. As much as I hate to say it, I think that you should cut your losses, declare bankruptcy, and let the house go into foreclosure. Down the road, you can begin building a new credit history after the slate is wiped clean.”

     Jen was an intelligent woman with no illusions and knew that Matt was right, so she let him guide her through the process of filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. She then began the search for rental housing for her and her son. Eventually, she found a small studio apartment in a less than desirable neighborhood, but she was counting on a now full-grown, intimidating Joe to keep her and Noah safe. Matt helped her move some of her belongings to her new residence after she first held a garage sale to dispense with furniture that wouldn’t fit into her new digs. One of Jennifer’s last acts before she left Emberton Court was to set her journal ablaze in the backyard one summer evening. As the sparks shot upward from the burning pyre, it was as if a weight was ascending from her soul as well. Her past was now over and obliterated! She was no longer that person and looked forward to building a new and improved version of herself.

     Matt continued their professional relationship and, after six months had passed, was gratified that the police had seemed to relegate little Cassidy’s murder to the unsolved, cold case files. Apparently, they had also given up trying to tug on that dangling string of a nebulous motive in Jen’s journal. Even though his job was done, Matt still sought the intriguing young woman’s company. She certainly seemed agreeable to having him around, however, she never flirted or gave any indication that she wanted their relationship to progress beyond friendship. Matt wasn’t quite sure what he really wanted. Maybe he just wanted to see Jen smile.

     At first, they didn’t go out on real “dates.” On the occasional Saturday or Sunday when Jen wasn’t working, Matt would drive her and Noah to the park or the zoo for a fun outing. Another time, it was a young children’s amusement park in Lancaster. If the two adults did decide to share a meal, it had to have chicken nuggets and fries on the menu because Noah always came along, too.

     The active child was now two-years-old and talking a blue streak to anyone who would listen to his non-stop chatter. Finally, Matt did get to see Jennifer’s smile as they both giggled over the toddler’s awkward but earnest vocabulary one evening at McDonald’s. Noah was a little dynamo who had never gone through that awkward stage of stranger anxiety. He was always happy, considered the world to be his oyster, and assumed everyone in it loved him as he loved them. It was also quite evident that he was the center of Jennifer’s world, and Matt wondered if there was any room left for another person.

     After a few more months went by, Matt became emboldened enough to broach the delicate subject of becoming a couple. Jen seemed startled by his request as if she had never entertained the thought of that kind of relationship between the two of them. Matt certainly didn’t want to push this fragile woman who only recently had seemed to find some joy in her existence. But he had to know where he stood.

     “Matt, I love being around you, and Noah loves you, too. You are good for us and have been wonderfully patient and kind during these last difficult months,” Jen haltingly began her answer.

     “I sense a ‘but’ coming next,” Matt predicted.

     Jen smiled a little sadly. “Please try and understand. I have trust issues, not with you, but rather with myself. After making blunder after blunder in the past, I am so afraid of making another and hurting someone. Right now, that ‘someone’ is you. I know that you want to make everything right in my world, but the only person who can do that is me. I have to grow up and assume responsibility for the choices that I make. When I hit rock bottom, I promised myself that I would never be dependent again and expect someone to shoulder my pain or to repair my screw ups.

     Be honest, Matt. You probably view me as a damsel in distress and you want to fix things to make them better. I now realize that’s what Tom did, too, but I don’t want another relationship based on one-sided intentions. Right now, I am in the throes of trying to create a new me, and I don’t really know who that person will ultimately be. During this metamorphosis, I need to develop a faith in myself and to trust my instincts. But, if I fail again, I certainly do not want to drag you down with me.”

     Matt smiled. “I’m a big boy, Jen, and will be walking into whatever develops between us with my eyes wide open. I am feeling far from worried or insecure because I doubt that you are capable of scarring me for life if ‘whatever’ doesn’t work out between us. We can take things slowly with no unrealistic expectations, and I swear that I will not stand in the way of your transformation. Instead, I’ll be proudly cheering you on. Please, Jen, come on this journey with me so that we can see where it leads us. It could be someplace wonderful.”

     Jen’s green eyes were troubled, but, in the end, she shyly grasped Matt’s hand and placed a butterfly kiss on his lips. Maybe, she reasoned, it was time to have a bit of faith in her instincts.

~~~~~~~~~~

     Matt was a man of his word and took their courtship very slowly. Sometimes, he brought steaks and baking potatoes to Jen’s tiny apartment along with a small bouquet of daisies and a twenty-five-pound bag of kibble for Joe. She would prepare the meal and smile at his thoughtfulness while the dog chowed down on his own feast. On other less frequent occasions, the couple would go out for a much more formal dinner in little hole-in-the-wall restaurants with flickering votive candles and linens on the table. Matt always made sure that he was the one to pay the babysitter when they got back to Jen’s apartment. They went to movies and shared boxes of overly buttered popcorn, and attended concerts at the local theater in York. At the end of each evening, Jen kissed Matt at the door and he retreated like a gallant gentleman, never pushing the envelope because he suspected that Jen wasn’t ready. 

     One very quiet morning when Jennifer had a day off from her job at the nursing home, she found herself feeling anxious and stressed. In an attempt to get her emotions under control, she busied herself collecting dirty clothes to take to a nearby laundromat. She wanted to get an early start so that she could be home again before Noah was ready for his afternoon nap. Matt was bringing takeout Chinese food after work tonight and Jen was looking forward to spending the evening with this very sweet and gentle man who would take her mind off other things.

     She had just sorted the lights and darks into two canvas laundry bags when the doorbell to her apartment rang. An alert and protective Joe hovered by her side when she opened the door to find Detective Stan Kostas on the threshold.

     “Hello, Mrs. Austin,” he began politely while eyeing the big dog who was, in turn, studying him with interest.

     “What brings you here, Detective?” Jennifer inquired coldly. She certainly was not about to let him into her apartment if she could help it.

     The older man didn’t make any overtures that looked as if he wanted to step inside. Instead, he uttered a simple sentence.

     “Do you know what today is?”

     “Of course I do,” Jennifer snapped. “I didn’t need you to come all the way to York to remind me that today is the one-year anniversary of Cassidy’s disappearance and her death.”

     “Yes, it is,” he agreed. “In case you are interested, your daughter’s murder continues to be unsolved and remains a cold case. That may seem to you like everything has been shelved and forgotten, but that’s just not true. I have a personal little ritual, you see. Every year on the anniversary of an unsolved murder that happened on my watch, I pull out the file and look at it again with fresh eyes to see what might have been overlooked or misunderstood at the time. Occasionally, I even get an epiphany so that I can take up the hunt once more. You might say that it’s an attempt at achieving closure for me and justice for the victim.”

    “That’s very noble of you, Detective Kostas,” Jennifer said woodenly. “I suppose that I can look forward to seeing you again next year and the year after that—unless, of course, an ‘epiphany’ leads you to the real killer. Then justice will be truly served and I’ll be vindicated.”

     While this exchange had been going on, Noah had silently crept up and was holding onto Jennifer’s leg while he stared at the strange man on the doorstep.

     “The little guy has really grown since the last time that I saw him,” Kostas noted. “He looks healthy as well as a bit curious.”

     Jennifer ignored the comment. “Anything else on your mind today, Detective? If not, then I think that we are done.”

     “We’re done for now,” the irritating man promised, but then, just as he was turning away, he lobbed one more non-sequitur her way.

     “Do you still smoke, Mrs. Austin?”

     “No, I don’t,” she answered him curtly. “I stopped the day when you found Cassidy’s body. So, I guess this marks the one-year anniversary of two events.”

     “That’s good,” the detective remarked. “Those things will be your downfall if you don’t stop.”

~~~~~~~~~~

     After Jennifer had closed the door once again, she grasped her hands tightly together to keep them from shaking and struggled to keep herself from hyperventilating. Then she wobbled over to a chair and gracelessly collapsed. With a child’s innate sense, Noah felt his mother’s sudden distress and moved closer. He climbed up into her lap, and, in a reversal of roles, sought to comfort her by patting her cheek softly with his pudgy little hand. Jennifer kept telling herself that she had to keep it together for her son’s sake. She simply could not give into fear and paranoia.

     Laundry chores were forgotten, and Jen stayed in all day. Somehow, she couldn’t dispel the irrational suspicion that Kostas was waiting outside and would dog her every move. When Matt arrived later in the evening with two bags of take-out containers from their favorite Chinese restaurant, Jennifer was too keyed up to eat. When she told him the reason, the young man was irate at first, but then became the calming voice of reason.

     “He’s just trying to rattle your cage in a ham-fisted way,” Matt decreed. “He didn’t accuse you of anything because he can’t. He has no leads and he’s frustrated by the ‘one that got away’ concept, and he’s taking it out on you just because he can. I get his mindset but I certainly don’t condone his actions today. I can lodge a complaint with his supervisor if you want me to take it to the next level.”

     “No, no,” Jen whispered, “that will only make him angry and more determined than ever to hound me. I just want the police department to leave me alone and focus on someone else.”

     Matt insisted that the thin young woman eat something, even if it was just a bowl of wonton soup and some tea. Over crunchy fortune cookies, he came up with a plan.

     “I think that you need a change of scenery, Jen, if only for a couple of days. Why don’t I make a few calls and see where we can go that’s not too far away. You can tell the nursing home that you have to attend to a family emergency, and then you can check with the babysitter to see if she can keep Noah and Joe until we get back.”

     Jennifer looked stricken and fearful. “I can’t leave Noah! If I did that the police might say I was a neglectful and inattentive parent—a bad mother—just like before. Even though they didn’t actually say it at the time, I knew that’s what they thought just like so many other people who were so quick to judge. If I leave Noah behind now, they may claim that I abandoned him, and then they would let Social Services take my child. Don’t you see, Matt? Noah has to stay with me at all times!”  

     The young man knew that he had to tread carefully to forestall a full-blown case of irrational hysteria. He cursed the obnoxious detective for undermining Jennifer’s confidence and recent hard-earned resiliency. Somehow, the lawyer was determined to fix this and put the pieces of a shattered, frightened woman back together again.

     After a few inquiring phone calls, Matt had secured a two-day stay for them at a rustic little cabin in the Poconos. The next morning, he, Jen, Noah, and even Joe climbed into Matt’s SUV and left town. The accommodations were exactly as the website claimed—a private, quiet haven in the forest. The little entourage took in the beautiful panoramic fall foliage around them, and Jen felt the twisted knot in her gut begin to loosen a bit.

     They had stopped for grocery essentials in the nearest town and made a simple early dinner, eating on a checkered tablecloth on the floor as if they were having a picnic. It was amusing to watch Noah try to figure out how to attack his first gooey s’more made in the room’s stone fireplace. Exhausted from his earlier romp through the fallen leaves, the toddler practically fell on his nose into a deep sleep.

     Jen gently picked up her child and tucked him onto a cot in a little alcove off from the main room. Of course, Joe insisted on curling up on the floor beside his charge to be a protective sentinel for the night. Now the two adults returned to sit by the fire, shoulder to shoulder, each studying the mesmerizing flames and lost in thought. Eventually, Matt’s arm encircled the woman beside him and he murmured softly in her ear.

     “I promise that I’ll never let anything bad happen to you, Jen, because I love you with all of my heart and soul.”

     The young woman turned her green eyes toward him and answered just as softly.

     “And I believe you because I think that I’ve come to love you, too.”

     Slowly, as if both were sleepwalking, they sought the cabin’s bedroom and closed the door. Taking turns, they divested each other of article after article of clothing until there was nothing but complete honesty between them. Jennifer felt the walls that she had steadfastly constructed around her heart begin to crumble, and wondered if she were a fool to allow herself to be vulnerable yet again.

     Their lovemaking started out gently and slowly at first, each participant sensing the other’s fragile hesitancy. However, deep into the hushed night, they found themselves reveling in the shared closeness of contented fulfillment. For now, even if it all later imploded, the experience was magical and good, Jennifer thought to herself. Maybe she just needed to learn to live in the moment.

~~~~~~~~~~

     All things, even seemingly enchanted interludes, must come to an end. On the third day, the little runaways returned to the city. In the days and weeks that followed, Matt spent more time in Jennifer’s small apartment than his own townhome. The two stole frequent moments to make love on the living room sofa while Noah was asleep in Jen’s bed. Finally, one day Matt had a suggestion.

     "Jen, you and Noah, and even Joe, are like family to me now. Why don’t you give up this tiny little apartment and move in with me? There’s more than enough space—even Noah can have his own bedroom.”

     Jennifer smiled softly. “I know that it would make everything so much more convenient, and certainly easier for me money-wise,” she explained. “But, it also would seem like I was giving up my independence, a milestone that took me a long time to reach in my life. I had never been truly responsible for myself until after Tom’s death. Looking back, it seemed as if I went from living under my parents’ roof to my new husband’s without ever standing on my own two feet. I was living in a dream world of ignorance during my marriage, thinking that things would go on forever and there would be a ‘happily ever after’ in that fairytale. Now I’m very cautious and don’t take anything for granted. I hate to sound like doom and gloom, but what happens if one day you decide that our relationship has changed and you want to be free?”

     Matt had an answer ready for that argument. After all, he was a lawyer.

     “My loving you and wanting to be with you will not be a threat to your independence, Jen. I promise! However, I’ll play devil’s advocate in this debate. In the unlikely event that it ever comes to the point that either of us wants to end the cohabiting situation, I would make sure that you and your son find other arrangements that will make you happy. I told you at the onset that I would never let anything bad happen to you, and I’m a man of my word.”

     “You can’t make that promise, Matt—not realistically,” Jen whispered as kindly as she could. “But maybe someday I’ll let myself believe that it’s true.”


	17. Chapter 17

       Matt let himself accept Jennifer’s decision with as much graceful capitulation as he could muster. It was difficult, but he reined in his fervor and didn’t shower his new lover with any personal gifts signifying a burgeoning affection. However, that did not stop him from buying an ever-growing little Noah new clothes, shoes, and the occasional toy. He also lugged in bags of groceries on a weekly basis, explaining that he was eating here almost every night, so that was only fair.

     After six months, the smitten attorney came to Jennifer’s apartment with momentous news, and he wasn’t sure how she would perceive this information, or his latest idea, for that matter.

     “Jen, as I’ve told you before, I don’t actually love my job in York, but it has afforded me the opportunity to take on an across-the-board spectrum of cases to gain invaluable experience. After a year and a half, I believe that I have earned my chops as a lawyer, and now I have other aspirations. To that end, my fervent hope has become eventually getting a position with an established law firm so that I could actually specialize in some field. So, every week, I’ve been sending out my beefed-up resume just hoping that someone will take a chance on me. Well, something finally popped, Jen, and I can’t tell you how excited I am.

     A small private legal firm in Pittsburgh is willing to take me on as an associate. They specialize in corporate law. Mergers, acquisitions, and patent rights may sound like a boring field, but, to tell you the truth, I’m not cut out for all the heart-rending angst of family law. The salary package is at the bottom of the totem pole, but it’s more than I’m making now. And the partners explained that they review each attorney’s work every six months and adjust their remuneration accordingly.”

     The young legal eagle about to soar took a breath and looked at Jennifer with an earnest, pleading look.

     “I would like you and Noah to come with me, Jen. I know that you want to be independent, and I understand that—really I do. But you could be your own person in another city as well as here. Pittsburgh is still in the state of Pennsylvania so your nursing license is valid and you could get a better job than the one that you hate at the nursing home. You would be far away from York and all the horrible memories tied to it. If you are still insistent, we could continue to live apart, but I’d prefer that we didn’t. C’mon, Jenn! Let’s start a new life and do it together.”

     The young woman was leery of sharing in Matt’s unbridled enthusiasm.

     “Matt, I am very happy for you because you deserve something better than being a slave to that dreary little office with its suffocating little cubicles. This is your chance to spread your wings and fly. A new life is a wonderful possibility for you, but I have baggage that will remain on my shoulders for the rest of my life. People who buy newspapers tend to believe everything that they read. And if they somehow managed to miss out on the horrific tabloid story of a woman who police think murdered her own child, then they probably saw my face splashed across their television screens while all of that was going on. I might as well sew a scarlet letter across my chest because people are never going to forget who I am.”

     Matt continued to be persuasive.

     “Maybe in a new part of this big state people will find themselves meeting a different person, a sweet young woman named Jennifer Stewart instead of Jennifer Austin. Please consent to marry me, Jen. I love you and want to be with you always.”

     Jennifer looked flummoxed for a second before regaining her equilibrium.

     “I love you, too, Matt,” she whispered, “but somehow this feels like you are trying to rescue me again. In another lifetime, I would have said ‘yes’ in a heartbeat, but now I don’t think that I want to take on the scary role of being someone’s wife, acquiring in-laws, and pretending to be someone that I’m not at extended family gatherings. We would be living a lie because I am who I am, and eventually someone will put the pieces together. I could never shame you that way.”

     “Let me put those fears to rest right now, Jen,” Matt argued. “I am an only child and my parents are both deceased. I have never made an effort to keep in contact with any extraneous cousins, aunts or uncles, nor have any of them made the overture. It’s always just been me all by my lonesome until I met you. There is absolutely no one waiting in the wings to judge you, and, for the record, nothing that you could ever do would shame me. I want us to be a family, something that I haven’t had in a very long time. Please, Jen, say yes so we can move forward with our lives. ”

~~~~~~~~~~

     In the end, against her better judgment, Jennifer allowed Matt to persuade her. Just before it was time to relocate to Pittsburgh, the excited attorney stood beside a nervous young woman holding a fidgety toddler’s hand in a judge’s chambers at the courthouse. When they departed that room, they were legally joined in matrimony. Even though Jennifer smiled, she was secretly terrified that it was all happening again, a replay of her past life when she had dared to hope that there were rainbows and unicorns in her future.

     The cost of living in Pittsburgh was a lot higher than in Southern York County, but Matt was earning an adequate salary and so was Jennifer when she managed to get a position in a nearby hospital. But until they familiarized themselves with their new city, the newlyweds decided to rent a modern three-story townhouse in a quiet little suburb.

     It took some patience to convince Noah to sleep in his new bed in an unfamiliar room, but ever-faithful Joe made the transition a bit easier for the little boy. The good-natured child also seemed to flourish in a progressive daycare center that was close to home. Other working parents crossed paths with Jennifer each morning and afternoon when they dropped or picked up their own kids. Some made polite conversation with the new mother, but Jen never encouraged a more intimate connection. She knew that she had to keep her distance because friendships meant intrusive questions that she definitely didn’t want to answer.

     As if some karmic hand was orchestrating things, the final adoption papers were signed making Matt a father to Noah on the very same day that marked the second anniversary of Cassidy’s death. Jennifer just held her breath waiting for Detective Kostas to show up on her doorstep. Instead, a photocopy of Cassidy’s death certificate arrived in the mailbox addressed to Jen with her new married name. She knew the cop had sent it to her because he had boldly put his name and the precinct address on the corner of the envelope. Jen shredded it, placed it in the garbage, and didn’t share the incident with Matt.

     Six months later, the couple found a little white colonial-style home in a suburb of the bustling city. It was within their price range, and it passed a home inspection with flying colors. Jennifer made sure that there were no leaky windows or traces of mold anywhere within its walls. She wanted this to be their forever home and sought to add personal touches throughout. Matt gave her free rein to shop for curtains and accessories, and most all the décor choices fell to her because Matt’s workload at the law firm had definitely intensified. On average, he was missing a home-cooked meal at least three times per week. Jen steadfastly refused to let herself recognize the parallel to her first marriage when she had been so lonely for her husband’s company.

     Three months after that, Jen missed her period but was in denial that she could have become pregnant. She always took her birth control pill religiously, so she chalked up the unusual occurrence to being stressed during the move. Then the telltale heartburn and nausea began. The test kit from the pharmacy told the tale as the shocked woman held the stick with trembling fingers. How could this have happened? Counting back on the calendar, Jen realized that she had taken an antibiotic for a sinus infection during that time, and those drugs sometimes interfered with the hormones in the pill that negated their efficacy.

     That night, Jennifer told Matt about their dilemma, but he didn’t see it as a dire predicament like she did. Sure, it was unexpected and quite a surprise, but a really nice surprise, he reassured her. She continued to work throughout her pregnancy, stubbornly refusing to let the obstetrician relate the coming baby’s gender to either her or Matt. She really didn’t want to know, and was almost in the eighth month when Matt finally had her agree to begin preparing a nursery. The new mother-to-be insisted on a soft neutral shade of green for the walls, and the dresser and chest of drawers were a pale oak. Matt was no expert, but he timidly expressed an opinion that everything looked a bit austere. So, to please him, Jen finally stenciled fuzzy white teddy bears on the walls.

     By the ninth month, Jen’s go-bag was packed and arrangements had been made with one of the staff at the daycare to take Noah when she went into actual labor. The little boy was now almost four-years-old and completely oblivious to all the drama taking place in his sphere. For him, life was always good and the glass certainly more than half full. Jennifer, as she often did, wished that she could borrow the child’s serendipity, if only for a little while.

     Two days shy of her actual due date—and weren’t those predictions always a crapshoot—she recognized the onset of pains that were only too familiar. She stayed at home for as long as she could while pacing the floor with a worried and nervous Matt looking on. The daycare center had been notified, and Noah would be going home with one of the caregivers for the night. The tyke was ecstatic at the news of this novel adventure.

     Matt drove them to the hospital with exquisite caution as if too sharp of a turn might harm his fragile wife and unborn baby. They were efficiently escorted to a birthing room upon arrival, and Jen was examined by a doctor who decreed that the baby’s head was not yet firmly seated in the birth canal. It would be some time before Jen would be ready to deliver her child.

     The young woman labored for hours, making no real progress in this strenuous undertaking of forcing a reluctant offspring from her womb. She was worn out and hurting when the obstetrician did one last internal examination.

     “It seems that this baby has managed to get itself wedged, shoulder-first, in the birth canal. I don’t think all the pushing in the world is going to help, so I’m going to intervene by performing a C-Section to get this stubborn little one out.”

     Matt looked terrified, but Jennifer felt defeated. She just closed her eyes with the knowledge that this was an omen. Matt donned a gown and mask and stood off to the side as Jen was wheeled into the delivery room, given spinal anesthetic, and sterile drapes were erected in front of her face. It wasn’t long after the initial incision that Jennifer heard the first plaintive wail with the doctor announcing that she and Matt now had a baby daughter. It was an anticlimactic moment for the new mother because, in her heart, she had already known.

     Jen stayed in the hospital with her newborn for two days, and Matt visited often with Noah in tow. At first, the little guy seemed fascinated with the small, red-faced critter who made sounds like a kitten, but then, like all youngsters his age, the novelty quickly wore off and he became bored with her. Matt had shyly asked if they could name the child “Rose,” which had been his mother’s name, and Jen agreed simply because she didn’t care one way or the other. The first-time father had fallen in love with the new woman in his life and relished holding, rocking, and feeding little Rose formula from a bottle. Jen had flatly refused all the pressure from the lactation nurses to breastfeed.

     The night before she was to be discharged home, Jen picked up the swaddled little bundle and gingerly settled into the rocker in the room. She pulled back the soft folds of the hospital blanket and stared at the tiny creature that her body had harbored for nine long months. For a second, two pairs of eyes met, and Jen wondered how newborns perceived the world around them. Did they actually see faces or just blurs of light and color? Did Rose know that it was her mother who was holding her? What did newborns really feel? Were they even capable of sensations other than being hungry or cold?

     _“Rose”_ —such an old-fashioned name, Jen thought to herself—a beautiful flower but also one that had sharp barbs that could tear into your flesh if you got too close. Hadn’t this little flower already caused Jennifer’s flesh to be torn wide open so that it could emerge? What was this fragile blossom capable of in the years to come?

     Jen was all too aware of her apprehensive feelings of foreboding, and knew that she would have to keep those demons at bay, tamped down securely in the dark recesses of her heart. She was determined to prevent their escape and the havoc that they would cause. She simply could not become a “Bad Mother” once more. No, she just couldn’t let it happen again!


End file.
